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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 August 2021
A patriarchal culture, reinforced by church discipline, has been ascribed to Wesleyan Methodism in the first half of the nineteenth century. This article returns to the same archives, Hinde Street Church in London, to present a more nuanced view of Methodist discipline. There were women who held influential positions in Methodist chapels, and they resisted ministerial authority with the support of male as well as female members. During this period, the Church was increasingly focused on maintaining a supportive community, with signifiers of status other than gender, such as perceived ‘usefulness’ in the church community.
With acknowledgements to Alan Brooks, Dr Sean Brady and the Revd Dr Jane Craske for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
1 Census of religious worship in England and Wales, 1851, abridged from the official report by Horace Mann, London 1854. Methodological issues in, for example, Field, Clive D., Periodizing secularization: religious allegiance in Britain, 1880–1945, Oxford 2019, 35–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Edward P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (1963), London 1980: criticisms at pp. 385–440; yearning for communitarian ideals at pp. 51–2.
3 Anna Clark, The struggle for the breeches: gender and the making of the British working class, Berkeley–Los Angeles, Ca 1995.
4 Ibid. 118.
5 Ibid. 117.
6 Alan Brooks, West End Methodism, London 2010, 26–31.
7 Ibid. 61.
8 City of Westminster Archives Centre, Hinde Street Church (hereinafter cited as M594), M594/27, circuit schedule book, 1844–50.
9 Brooks, West End Methodism, 378–83.
10 Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850, London 1987, 272–5Google Scholar.
11 Wilson, Linda, Constrained by zeal: female spirituality amongst Nonconformists, 1825–1875, Carlisle 2000, 210–11, 225–6Google Scholar.
12 Sheila Rowbotham, ‘The trouble with patriarchy’, and Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor, ‘In defence of “patriarchy”’, in R. Samuel (ed.), People's history and socialist theory, London 1981, 363–73.
13 Clark, Struggle for the breeches, 118.
14 Nancy Christie, ‘“Proper government and discipline”: family religion and masculine authority in nineteenth century Canada’, in J. Arnold and S. Brady (eds), What is masculinity? Historical dynamics from antiquity to the contemporary world, Basingstoke 2013, 389–412 at p. 393.
15 John Tosh, A man's place: masculinity and the middle-class home in Victorian England, New Haven–London 1990, 33–9. A similar emphasis in America is shown in A. Gregory Schneider, The way of the cross leads home: the domestication of American Methodism, Bloomington–Indianapolis, In 1993, 133–42.
16 John Tosh, Manliness and masculinities in nineteenth century Britain, Harlow 2005, 161; Wilson, Constrained by zeal, 150–2.
17 Adam Clarke (1760–1832) was President of Conference in 1806, 1814 and 1822, and a minister at Hinde Street Church 1809–11, 1823–4 and 1828–30: Brooks, West End Methodism, 45–6; John Telford, Two West End chapels, London 1886.
18 Adam Clarke, ‘Husband and wife’, in his Christian theology (1835), London 2014, 174–8. Anna Clark's use of this reference quotes ‘domination’ rather than ‘dominion’: Struggle for the breeches, 249.
19 Clarke, Christian theology, 175.
20 Wesleyan Methodist Church, Minutes of the Methodist Conference (1810), answer to question 19: ‘Has our discipline been sufficiently enforced?’
21 Clark, Struggle for the breeches, 103–7.
22 M594/121, leaders’ meetings, 16 July 1816; 19 Feb. 1822; 17 Aug. 1830; Brooks, West End Methodism, 232–3.
23 M594/121, 29 Apr. 1817.
24 Ibid. 14, 21 Mar. 1818.
25 Ibid. 29 Apr. 1817.
26 The London Gazette, 25 Nov. 1831, ‘Notice of bankruptcy’, 2473.
27 Hilton, Andrew John Boyd, A mad, bad and dangerous people, Oxford 2008, 398–9Google Scholar.
28 Clark, Struggle for the breeches, 52.
29 Ibid. 103.
30 M594/121, 27 Dec. 1814.
31 Ibid. 23 Dec. 1817.
32 Ibid. 13 July 1819.
33 Ibid. 23 Jan. 1838.
34 M594/122, 10, 24, 31 Oct. 1843.
35 M594/121, 1 Oct. 1816.
36 Ibid. 27 Aug. 1816.
37 Ibid. 10 Mar. 1818.
38 M594/122, 22 Dec. 1818.
39 M594/121, 20 May 1817.
40 Ibid. 16 June 1819.
41 Ibid. 23 Dec.1817; 8 Oct. 1822.
42 Ibid. 28 Apr., 12 May 1840; Brooks, West End Methodism, 231.
43 M594/121, 17 Aug. 1815.
44 Ibid. 15 July 1815; 7, 20 Oct. 1817; 30 July 1822.
45 Clark, Anna, ‘The rhetoric of Chartist domesticity’, Journal of British Studies xxxi/1 (1992), 62–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 74.
46 Clark, Struggle for the breeches, 104.
47 McConnell, J. E., ‘The character of Methodism in George Eliot's Adam Bede’, Methodist History xlv/4 (2007), 248Google Scholar.
48 M594/121, 14 Dec. 1820.
49 Described as ‘the oldest leader in the Hinde Street Society’ in W. R. Ward, Early Victorian Methodism, Oxford 1976, 307; Brooks, West End Methodism, 116.
50 Clark, Struggle for the breeches, 106.
51 M594/121, 10 Mar. 1818.
52 The Regent Street partnership dissolved: London Gazette, 1 June 1883, 25238/2887.
53 Tosh, John, ‘What should historians do with masculinity? Reflections on nineteenth-century Britain’, History Workshop Journal xxxviii/1 (1994), 179–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 195.
54 The Times, 7 July 1841, 7.
55 M594/122, 7 Jan. 1851.
56 Brooks, West End Methodism, 63–-8.
57 Ibid. 67–8.
58 Wesleyan Times, 3 Mar. 1851. This was a reformers’ publication giving a detailed (though not unbiased) report.
59 Davidoff and Hall noted the belief among ‘serious Christians’ that women should be subordinate to men socially: Family fortunes, 114.
60 Tosh, A man's place, 3.
61 ‘The Wesleyan Inquisition’, Wesleyan Times, 31 Mar. 1851.
62 Bebbington, David, ‘Secession and revival: Louth Free Methodist Church in the 1850s’, Wesley and Methodist Studies vii/1 (2015), 54–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Kevin M. Watson, Pursuing social holiness, Oxford 2014; White, Charles Edward, ‘The decline of the class meeting’, Methodist History xxxviii/4 (July 2000), 258–67Google Scholar; Rack, Henry D., ‘The decline of the class-meeting and the problem of church membership in nineteenth century Wesleyanism’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society xxxix/1 (1973), 12–21Google Scholar.
64 Thomas West, The life and journals of the Rev. Daniel West, Wesleyan minister and deputation to the Wesleyan mission stations of the Gold Coast, London 1857, 27.
65 Ibid. 98–112.
66 Ibid. 114, 119.
67 Ibid. 34–6, 112–14, 119.
68 David Bebbington, ‘Methodist spirituality, 1800–1950’, <http://www.methodistheritage.org.uk/missionary-history-bebbington-spirituality-2004.pdf>, accessed 17 Mar. 2019, p. 4.
69 Phyllis Mack, Heart religion in the British Enlightenment, Cambridge 2008, 247.
70 D. A. Gowland, Methodist secessions: the origins of free Methodism in three Lancashire towns, Manchester 1979, 166.
71 Tosh, Manliness and masculinities, 151.
72 Brooks, West End Methodism, 226.
73 Watson, Pursuing social holiness, 3.
74 Telford, Two West-End chapels, 229. In 1850 the proportion of men in England and Wales able to sign their name on registration of their marriage was approximately 70%; the proportion of women able to do so was 55%: Schofield, Roger, ‘Dimensions of illiteracy, 1750–1850’, Explorations of Economic History x/4 (1973), 437–54Google Scholar at p. 443.
75 M594/121, 15 May 1827.
76 Clark, Struggle for the breeches, 94.
77 Alan Brooks provides similar figures for different years: West End Methodism, 226.
78 M594/121, 20 Jan. 1821.
79 Bebbington, ‘Secession and revival’, 70.
80 Lloyd, Women and British Methodism, 29–31.
81 Tosh, John, ‘Keighley to St-Denis: separation and intimacy in Victorian bourgeois marriage’, History Workshop Journal xl (1995), 193–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 201.
82 Telford, Two West End Chapels, 211.
83 Brooks, West End Methodism, 57–62.
84 Mary Corderoy's life (1791–1847), Wesleyan Methodist Magazine lxxiii (1850), 1017–23.
85 Wilson, Constrained by zeal, 144–6, 152–4.
86 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, 123–6. Examples of ministers’ wives in Hinde Street include M594/121, leaders’ meeting minutes, 21 Oct. 1851, Mrs Barton as class leader; M594/27, circuit schedule book, Mrs Young as class leader.
87 The men of the Corderoy family were successful surveyors and active as senior laypeople in more than one Wesleyan London circuit during this period, as well as serving on connexional committees.
88 M594/27, circuit schedule book, 1844–50.
89 The Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.
90 Nehemiah Curnock, Hinde Street Chapel, 1810–1910, London 1910, 26.
91 Ibid. 40–1.
92 M594/121, 12 Aug. 1830.
93 M594/122, 19 Dec. 1843; 17 Dec. 1844.
94 Curnock, Hinde Street, 105.
95 Morning Chronicle, 22 Apr. 1822; Morning Post, 28 Apr; 1823; Methodist Magazine xliii (June 1820), 465.
96 F. K. Prochaska, Women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century England, Oxford 1980, 71.
97 Susan Mumm, ‘Women and philanthropic cultures’, in S. Morgan and J. DeVries (eds), Women, gender and religious cultures in Britain, 1800–1940, London 2010, 54–71.
98 M594/116, Hinde Street trustees' meeting, 6 July 1810; M594/121, leaders’ meeting, 5 Aug. 1835; Telford, Two West End chapels, 128.
99 M594/122, 23 Jan. 1844.
100 Ibid. 28 Oct. 1845.
101 M594/121, May–Dec. 1837.
102 Geoffrey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain, 1851–75, St Albans 1973, 281–2.
103 Sonya O. Rose, Limited livelihoods: gender and class in nineteenth-century England, London 1992.
104 M594/141, Sunday school minutes, 19 Jan. 1852.
105 Curnock, Hinde Street, 51–2.
106 Brooks, West End Methodism, 229–59; Curnock, Hinde Street, 49–55.
107 Henry Basden, ‘The great utility and importance of Sunday schools’, Methodist Magazine xli (Aug. 1818), 616–19 at p. 617; Telford, Two West-End chapels, 262.
108 Basden, ‘The great utility’, 617.
109 Curnock, Hinde Street, 31.
110 Wesleyan Methodist Church, Minutes of the Methodist Conference, 1803, answer to question 20A; George Smith, History of Wesleyan Methodism, second edn, London 1857–61, ii. 388–9; Deborah M. Valenze, Prophetic sons and daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England, Princeton 2017, 92; Gareth Lloyd, ‘Repression and resistance: Wesleyan female public ministry in the generation after 1791’, in N. Virgoe (ed.), Angels and impudent women, Loughborough 2007, 114–31.
111 M594/121, 28 Jan. 1840.
112 Jennifer M. Lloyd, Women and the shaping of British Methodism: persistent preachers, 1807–1907, Manchester 2009, 49–51, 134; Gail Malmgreen, ‘Domestic discords: women and the family in east Cheshire Methodism’, in J. Obelkevich, L. Roper and S. Raphael (eds), Disciplines of faith: Studies in religion, politics, and patriarchy, New York 1987.
113 John H. Lenton, ‘Support groups for Methodist women preachers, 1803–1851’, in G. Hammond and P. S. Forsaith (eds), Religion, gender, and industry, Cambridge 2011, 137–55.
114 John Pritchard, Methodists and their missionary societies, 1760–1900, London 2013, 243–54; Emily J. Manktelow, Missionary families: race, gender and generation on the spiritual frontier, Manchester 2013; Janet Kelly, ‘Presenting a ministry of wives’, in Virgoe, Angels and impudent women, 7–30.