No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
FAITH AND URBAN DOMESTIC SOCIABILITY IN NORTHERN ENGLAND, 1760–1835
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2020
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between religion and the informal, everyday instances of sociability that took place in urban homes between 1760 and 1835. Using the letters and diaries of middling and labouring individuals living in northern English towns, it suggests that religious practice was not separate from ‘secular’ sociability, but occurred in the same time and space. The article demonstrates that worldly practices and considerations such as courtship and the demonstration of status were entwined with matters of faith, and that the social opportunities offered by the industrializing town were considered to revitalize rather than endanger faith. The article builds on existing research into sociability and nonconformity in earlier periods to suggest that informal domestic sociability was a significant arena for lay agency and an integral part of individual faith for Anglicans, as well as individuals across the Protestant spectrum, well into the nineteenth century.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
This article was produced as part of the project ‘Faith in the Town: Lay Religion, Urbanisation and Industrialisation in England, 1740–1830’, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I would like to thank Hannah Barker, Jeremy Gregory, and Carys Brown, as well as attendees at conferences in Manchester and Oxford, for their comments and questions.
References
1 Doran, John, Methuen, Charlotte, and Walsham, Alexandra, eds., Religion and the household (Woodbridge, 2014)Google Scholar; Hamling, Tara, Decorating the ‘godly’ household: religious art in post-Reformation Britain (New Haven, CT, 2010)Google Scholar; Winner, Lauren F., A cheerful and comfortable faith: Anglican religious practice in elite households of eighteenth-century Virginia (New Haven, CT, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Alexandra Walsham, ‘Introduction’, in Doran, Methuen, and Walsham, eds., Religion and the household, p. xxvii.
3 The phrase ‘sociable piety’ is coined in Morrissey, Mary and Wright, Gillian, ‘Piety and sociability in early modern women's letters’, Women's Writing, 13 (2006), pp. 44–59, at p. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Carys Brown, ‘Religious coexistence and sociability in England after the Toleration Act, c. 1689–c. 1750’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2018), chs. 4 and 5; Herbert, Amanda E., Female alliances: gender, identity, and friendship in early modern Britain (London, 2014), chs. 5 and 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pullin, Naomi, Female friends and the making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650–1750 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 153, 165–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michael Smith, ‘The affective communities of Protestantism in north west England, c. 1660–c. 1740’ (Ph.D. thesis, Manchester, 2017), ch. 4.
4 Herbert, Female alliances, pp. 30–1, 146, 186; Alexandra Walsham, ‘Holy families: the spiritualization of the early modern household revisited’, in Doran, Methuen, and Walsham, eds., Religion and the household, pp. 131, 136–50; Susan Royal, ‘Reforming household piety: John Foxe and the Lollard conventicle tradition’, in ibid., pp. 188–98; Cambers, Andrew and Wolfe, Michelle, ‘Reading, family religion, and evangelical identity in late Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 47 (2004), pp. 875–96, at pp. 877, 882CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Naomi Pullin, Female friends, pp. 172–3, 194–5. The exception, although focusing on an earlier period, is Smith, ‘Affective communities’, p. 194.
5 Winner, Cheerful and comfortable faith, pp. 2, 8–9.
6 Sheils, W. J., ‘“Getting on” and “getting along” in parish and town: Catholics and their neighbours in England’, in Kaplan, Benjamin, Moore, Bob, van Nierop, Henk F. K., and Pollman, Judith, eds., Catholic communities in Protestant states: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester, 2009), pp. 67–83Google Scholar; Lewycky, Nadine and Morton, Adam, eds., Getting along? Religious identities and confessional relations in early modern England (Abingdon, 2016)Google Scholar; Brown, ‘Religious coexistence’.
7 Goldie, Mark, ‘Voluntary Anglicans’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003), pp. 977–90, at pp. 989–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gregory, Jeremy, ‘Introduction: transforming “the age of reason” into “an age of faiths”: or, putting religions and beliefs (back) in the eighteenth century’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 32 (2009), pp. 287–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Borsay, Peter, The English urban renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 126–7Google Scholar; Lloyd, Sarah, ‘Pleasing spectacles and elegant dinners: conviviality, benevolence, and charity anniversaries in eighteenth-century London’, Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002), pp. 23–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rappaport, Erika D., ‘Sacred and useful pleasures: the temperance tea party and the creation of a sober consumer culture in early industrial Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 52 (2013), pp. 990–1016CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunt, Margaret R., The middling sort: commerce, gender, and the family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, CA, 1996), pp. 102–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Griffin, Emma, Liberty's dawn: a people's history of the industrial revolution (New Haven, CT, 2013), pp. 193–4, 196, 203CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The exception is Linda Wilson, ‘“Domestic charms, business acumen, and devotion to Christian work”: Sarah Terrett, the Bible Christian Church, the household and the public sphere in late Victorian Bristol’, in Doran, Methuen, and Walsham, eds., Religion and the household, pp. 405–15.
10 Vickery, Amanda, Behind closed doors: at home in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, 2009), p. 12Google Scholar.
11 Borsay, English urban renaissance, pp. 199–202, 232, 278; Vickery, Amanda, The gentleman's daughter: women's lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, 1998), pp. 195–223, esp. pp. 208, 222Google Scholar; Mullin, Janet E., ‘“We had carding”: hospitable card play and polite domestic sociability among the middling sort in eighteenth-century England’, Journal of Social History, 42 (2009), pp. 989–1008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walcot, Clare, ‘Mrs Hobart's routs: town house hospitality in 1790s London’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 77 (2014), pp. 453–77Google Scholar.
12 Mullin, ‘Hospitable card play’, pp. 989, 992–3; Borsay, English urban renaissance, pp. 264–5; Klein, Lawrence E., ‘Sociability, solitude, and enthusiasm’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 60 (1998), pp. 153–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Mee, Jon, Conversable worlds: literature, contention, and community, 1762 to 1830 (Oxford, 2011), pp. 15–16, 58–60, 72–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Brown, ‘Religious coexistence’, pp. 190–2.
15 Diary of Elizabeth Prince, 2 Aug. 1830, Wigan Archives, D/D2 EHC, vol. 15, p. 20.
16 ‘Some account of the personal religion of Margaret Gray’, 30 Mar. 1823, York Explore Library & Archive (YELA), GRF/8/2, p. 22.
17 Herbert, Female alliances, pp. 142–3; Smith, ‘Affective communities’, pp. 163–9.
18 Longden, Henry, The life of Mr Henry Longden, (late of Sheffield), compiled from his own memoirs, from his diary, and his letters (Liverpool, 1813), pp. 33–4, quoting Psalm 133:1Google Scholar.
19 Smith, ‘Affective communities’, pp. 155, 194.
20 ‘Some account of the personal religion of Margaret Gray’, 1 Jan. 1826, p. 76.
21 Brown, ‘Religious coexistence’; Herbert, Female alliances; Smith, ‘Affective communities’.
22 Cambers and Wolfe, ‘Reading, family religion, and evangelical identity’, p. 879.
23 Diary of Jane Smith, 5 and 8 July 1827, Tyne & Wear Archives, DX874.
24 Jonathan Gray to Mrs Robinson, 9 Oct.–1 Nov. 1795, YELA, GRF/4/3/J/1.
25 This was also the case in late seventeenth-century households: see Cambers and Wolfe, ‘Reading, family religion, and evangelical identity’, p. 881.
26 ‘The St Peters Chronicle, April 1834’, YELA, GRF/4/4/7.
27 Diary of Faith Gray, 1764–1810, 18 June 1773, YELA, GRF/5/1, p. 24.
28 Rebecca Hey to William Hey, 18 Oct. 1828, YELA, HEY/7/2.
29 Johnson, Alastair, ed., The diary of Thomas Giordani Wright, Newcastle doctor, 1826–1829 (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 247Google Scholar.
30 Tomes, Nancy, ‘The Quaker connection: visiting patterns among women in the Philadelphia Society of Friends, 1750–1800’, in Zuckerman, Michael, ed., Friends and neighbors: group life in America's first plural society (Philadelphia, PA, 1982), pp. 177, 179Google Scholar; Pullin, Female friends, pp. 137, 139–40, 176–7 (quote).
31 Journal of Eliza Ann Morley, 15 and 18 Jan. 1836, York, Borthwick Institute for Archives (BIA), MOU 5/3/1/1.
32 Anne White to her mother, 2 May 1835, BIA, MOU 6/7/2/1. White refers to Some account of the life and religious labours of Sarah Grubb (Dublin, 1792), pp. 298–9.
33 Journal of William Robson, Mar. 1818, Durham Record Office, D/Wa 1/4/1, pp. 157–8, 19–20, 30, 55.
34 Pullin, Female friends, pp. 4–5.
35 Journal of William Robson, 14 Dec. 1817, p. 126.
36 Herbert, Female alliances, pp. 162–3; Pullin, Female friends, pp. 153, 165–7.
37 ‘Manuscript account of the life of Benjamin Woolley by Jabez Woolley’, University of Huddersfield Archives, WHS/12774, fo. 3r.
38 Diary of Faith Gray, 1764–1810, Mar. and May 1776, pp. 25–8, 31, 33–4.
39 Brown, ‘Religious coexistence’, pp. 201–2.
40 Longden, Life of Mr Henry Longden, p. 156.
41 Diary of Faith Gray, 1764–1810, 2 June 1809, p. 156.
42 Thomas Rebanks to James Wilson, 25 February 1759, Kendal Archive Centre, WDHCW/3/1/8.
43 Diary of Thomas Brancker, 12 June 1825, West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), Leeds, WYL1963, vol. 2.
44 Mee, Conversable worlds, pp. 15–16.
45 Brown, ‘Religious coexistence’, pp. 197, 199; Smith, ‘Affective communities’, p. 165.
46 Diary of Elizabeth Prince, 4 Oct. 1830, and 16 and 29 June 1830, pp. 47, 5, 9.
47 Diary of an unknown Methodist, 2–3 Dec. 1784 and 12 June 1785, Sheffield City Archives (SCA), MD5716/18/1.
48 See, for example, Matthew Kadane, The watchful clothier: the life of an eighteenth-century Protestant capitalist (New Haven, CT, 2013).
49 William Gray jun. to William Gray sen., [late 1773], YELA, GRF/4/1/W/2.
50 Journal of William Robson, 27 Feb. 1818, p. 148, emphasis in original.
51 Sarah Crosby to Mary Fletcher, 26 Mar. 1787, Manchester, John Rylands Library (JRL), MAM/FL/2/5A/18, emphasis in original.
52 Diary of Elizabeth Prince, 1 Oct. 1830, p. 46.
53 William Gray jun. to William Gray sen., 12 Feb. 1774, YELA, GRF/4/1/W/3, emphasis in original.
54 M[artha] Smith to Robert Hawley, 11 Nov. 1792, Doncaster Archives, DD/CL/3/18.
55 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 4 Aug. 1813, YELA, GRF/5/2, p. 31.
56 Mullett, Michael A., ‘Catholic and Quaker attitudes to work, rest, and play in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England’, in Swanson, Robert N., ed., The use and abuse of time in Christian history (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 196Google Scholar; Jacob, W. M., Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 53, 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 Walsh, John and Taylor, Stephen, ‘Introduction: the Church and Anglicanism in the “long” eighteenth century’, in Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin, and Taylor, Stephen, eds., The Church of England, c. 1689–c. 1833: from toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 11–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Diary of Thomas Brancker, vol. 5, 3 Feb. 1828.
59 Journal of Eliza Ann Morley, 10 and 31 Jan. 1836. JRH and J cannot be further identified; SM was a fellow schoolteacher.
60 Diary of Ann Prest, 10 Nov. 1776, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, MS52/4.
61 Diary of John Courtney, 27 Feb.–15 Mar. 1761, Hull History Centre (HHC), U DDX/60/2, vol. 1, pp. 72–5; 16 Sep. 1764, and 6 and 13 Apr. 1766, vol. 2, pp. 49, 111–12.
62 Memorial of Walter Spencer Stanhope, n.d., WYAS, Bradford, SpSt/9/37, fo. 36v.
63 Diary of George Heywood, Oct. 1814, July 1815, 15–17 Oct. 1815, and 12–21 Nov. 1815, JRL, ENG MS 703, pp. 69, 88, 160, 162, 181–4.
64 Diary of Thomas Brancker, vol. 1, 21 and 31 Dec., 26 Jan., and 2 Feb. 1823; vol. 3, 15 Oct. 1826.
65 Jacob, Lay people and religion, pp. 14–18; Corfield, Penelope J., The impact of English towns 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1982), p. 138Google Scholar.
66 Autobiography of David Binns, n.d., WYAS, Calderdale, MISC:379/1, fo. 14r.
67 Memoirs of Oswald Allen, n.d., YELA, OSW/1, p. 15.
68 [Samuel Pike], A plain and full account of the Christian practices observed by the church in St. Martin's-le-grand, London (Boston, 1766), pp. 7–8.
69 Memoirs of Oswald Allen, p. 19.
70 Independent Methodist Magazine, vol. 1 (Aug. 1823–May 1826), pp. 559–60, Independent Methodist Archive, Wigan.
71 James Montgomery to [Mary Anne Rawson], 1 Feb. 1814, in Mary Anne Rawson, ‘Memorials of Montgomery’, Sheffield University Special Collections (SUSC), MS69/Box2/4, fo. 20r–v.
72 Longden, Life of Mr Henry Longden, pp. 51–2.
73 Independent Methodist Magazine, vol. 1, pp. 559–60, emphasis in original.
74 Stockport Sunday School, letters, 1795–1810, Stockport Archives, B/S/5/2.
75 Thomas Allen, ‘Address to the mechanics and working classes of the borough of Macclesfield’, Oct. 1825, Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, D 4992/1. Similar concerns appear in Fish Street Sunday School Rules, ‘Report of the Sub-Committee’, 23 Nov. 1819, HHC, L DCFS/8/1/1, p. 41.
76 Sheffield Sunday School Union Minute Book, 1812–20, SUSC, MS468/MIN/1/1, pp. 187–9.
77 Heal, Felicity, Hospitality in early modern England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 2, 6–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 Ibid., pp. 62–4, 79–80, 86, 93.
79 Pullin, Naomi, ‘Sustaining “the household of faith”: female hospitality in the early transatlantic Quaker community’, Journal of Early Modern History 22 (2018), pp. 96–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
80 Diary of Faith Gray, 1764–1810, 17–18 July 1804, p. 128.
81 ‘Some account of the personal religion of Margaret Gray’, 13 Aug. 1825, pp. 64–5.
82 Diary of Faith Gray, 1764–1810, 19 Oct. 1804, p. 150.
83 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 10 Apr. 1811, 17–18 Mar. 1812, pp. 1, 7.
84 This is echoed in the experience of the Terrett family of late Victorian Bristol, who provided hospitality for visiting Methodists ‘because of the size of their house as well as their commitment to the life of the chapel’. See Wilson, ‘“Domestic charms”’, p. 409.
85 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 14 Dec. 1814, p. 42; Diary of Faith Gray, 1764–1810, Jun. 1802, p. 120.
86 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 17 Jun. 1814, p. 40; Kay, John, A series of original portraits and caricature etchings, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1838), pp. 152, 154Google Scholar.
87 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 29 Jul. 1817, 17–21 May 1820, and 9–13 Jan. 1825, pp. 68, 73–4, 89.
88 Alison Twells, The civilising mission and the English middle class, 1792–1850 (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 99.
89 Catherine Read to Joseph Read, 12 Sept. 1831, and Catherine Read to her sister, 22 Sept. 1831, SCA, MD5690/5.
90 Twells, Civilising mission, pp. 54–5, 91.
91 Ibid., pp. 83–114.
92 Diary of Robert Heywood, 15 Jan. 1818, 6 and 20 Feb. 1818, 22 and 23 Sept. 1821, Bolton Archives, ZHE/71/4.
93 Diary of Martha Rylands, 1810–11, 27 Aug. 1810, Warrington Archives, E4748, box 3/2, fo. 26r.
94 Diary of Martha Rylands, 1811–15, 9 Aug. 1815, Warrington Archives, E4748, box 3/3, fo. 79r–v.
95 Twells, Civilising mission, pp. 83–4; Winner, Cheerful and comfortable faith, pp. 17–18; Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, pp. 196, 202.
96 Stubenrauch, Joseph, The evangelical age of ingenuity in industrial Britain (Oxford, 2016), p. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
97 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 9 May 1821 and 13 Jan. 1825, pp. 76, 89.
98 Catherine Read to Elizabeth Read, 5 Sept. 1831, SCA, MD5690/5.
99 Rebecca Hey to Miss Carr, 9 Aug. 1830, WYAS, Leeds, WYL/1535/2.
100 ‘Some account of the personal religion of Margaret Gray’, 1826, p. 16.
101 Jacob, Lay people and religion, pp. 22, 31. Neither William Richardson nor John Graham went to Oxford or Cambridge, and Richardson was ‘of honest and reputable, though not of rich parents’. Anon., A brief memoir of the late Revd. Wm Richardson (2nd edn, London, 1822), p. 1.
102 Diary of Faith Gray, 1811–26, 1 Oct. 1811 and 29 Jan. 1812, pp. 5–7.
103 Borsay, English urban renaissance, pp. 291–4.
104 Mullin, ‘Hospitable card play’, p. 993.
105 Samuel Hey to William Hey, Oct. 1832, Leeds University Special Collections, MS 1991/3/19.
106 Barker, Hannah, ‘A devout and commercial people: religion and trade in Manchester during the long eighteenth century’, in Chalus, Elaine and Gauci, Perry, eds., Revisiting the polite and commercial people: essays in Georgian politics, society, and culture in honour of Professor Paul Langford (Oxford, 2019), p. 145Google Scholar.
107 John Barber to Samuel Bardsley, 18 May 1799, JRL, PLP 4/69/2.
108 Borsay, English urban renaissance, pp. 232, 238, 241.
109 Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, pp. 207–8.
110 William Gray's notebook, 1821, YELA, GRF/5/3, p. 6.
111 Brown, ‘Religious coexistence’.
112 Winner, Cheerful and comfortable faith, p. 4.
113 Valenze, Deborah, Prophetic sons and daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England (Princeton, NJ, 1985), pp. 10–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
114 Cambers and Wolfe, ‘Reading, family religion, and evangelical identity’, p. 881.
115 Winner, Cheerful and comfortable faith, p. 2.