Chapter Three - Popular protests: the third rise of Methodism 1831–1851

Summary

Part 1 Narrative

The Religion of the People

After more than a decade of decline and stagnation, at the end of the 1820s Wesleyan membership, in the south of the county at least, began once again to expand rapidly (see Table 16). Between June 1827 and June 1830 the Bedford, Luton and Leighton Buzzard circuits saw their combined membership rise from 1,491 to 2,160, an increase of nearly 45% in three years, more than eleven times the rate of growth reported by the denomination nationally. For the next two years numbers levelled out, but in 1832 the rapid growth resumed and this time the Biggleswade, St Neots and Higham Ferrers circuits also reported large numbers of new members. Between 1832 and 1835 membership of the six circuits increased by over 50%, almost four times the rate of growth reported by the connexion across England as a whole. The cumulative effect of these two bursts of growth was to bring Wesleyan membership in the county close to three thousand, or about 5% of the adult population. Across England as a whole the figure was only 2%. Bedfordshire had become a Wesleyan stronghold.

As in the war years, geographic expansion was one of the drivers of numerical growth. Between 1828 and 1836, 10 societies were added to the Bedford circuit, 12 to the Biggleswade circuit and 10 to the Luton circuit. By 1835 there were approximately 65 Wesleyan societies in Bedfordshire itself, covering more than half the parishes. The process of expansion, however, appears to have followed a significantly different course. In the past new societies had first been added to the weekly rounds of the professional itinerant preachers and then added to the Sunday preaching-plan to be supplied by local preachers. Now, it appears, the process was reversed and the initiative was in the hands of the amateurs. In the Biggleswade circuit, it was reported that:

About thirty years ago, Ashwell was statedly visited by the Itinerant Preachers; but they afterwards desisted from their labours; … [but more recently] the divine blessing having accompanied the word of life, as occasionally administered by our Local Preachers, a society was formed, and the place taken on the Circuit plan.