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Gideon Ouseley: Rural Revivalist, 1791-1839
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Gideon Ouseley was born in the year of John Wesley’s second visit to County Galway, was ‘converted’ in the year of Wesley’s death, and died on the one hundredth anniversary of Wesley’s introduction to field preaching. A Methodist rural revivalist could have no better pedigree. I first encountered him, not in a dream as many Methodist contemporaries seem to have done, but in the correspondence of Joseph Butterworth, MP, to whom Ouseley sent graphic details of the nature of Irish Catholicism for his controversial speeches against Roman Catholic emancipation, and in the records of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, in which Ouseley stands out as the most flamboyant missionary of his generation. In terms of published works Ouseley’s career can also be traced through his prolific anti-Catholic pamphleteering and in the pages of William Arthur’s unexceptional Victorian biography. But by far the most revealing record of his life and work is to be found in the manuscripts collected by John Ouseley Bonsall, a Dublin businessman who hero-worshipped his missionary uncle.
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References
1 Manchester the John Rylands University Library, Methodist archives research centre MS, papers of Thomas Allan, Joseph Butterworth, and Gideon Ouseley. Butterworth was MP for Coventry (1812-18) and for Dover (1820-6).
2 University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, Methodist Missionary Society MS, boxes 1-3 and 74-5. Additional missionary correspondence is to be found in NIPRO, Irish Wesley Historical Society MS under restricted consultation. See also Coke, Thomas, Copies of the Letters from the Missionaries who are employed in Ireland, for the Instruction in their own Language, and for the Conversion of the Native Irish (London, 1801)Google Scholar.
3 Lack of space prevents a full list but the most important are; Ouseley, Gideon, The Substance of Two Letters to the Rev John Thayer, Once a Presbyterian Minister, but now a Roman Catholic Priest and Missionary. In Conseauence of his Public Challenge to all Protestants (Dublin, 1814)Google Scholar; Old Christianity Defended (Dublin, 1820); Letters to Dr Doyle on the Doctrine so Piis Church with an easy and effectual plan to obtain Immediate Emancipation (Dublin, 1824); Letters in Defence of the Roman Catholics of Irelandm which is opened the Real Source of their Many Injuries, and of Ireland’s Sorrows, addressed to D. O’Connell (London, 1829); Letters on Topics of Vast Importance to all Roman Catholics and the State in reply to Dr Crolly’s Letter to Lord Donegall (Dublin, 1832); An Easy Mode of Securing Ireland’s Peace (Dublin, 1833); and A Dreadful Conspiracy against the Church of Christ Developed (Dublin, 1837).
4 Arthur, William, The Life of Gideon Ouseley (London, 1876)Google Scholar. See also Crookshank, C. H., History of Methodism in Ireland, 3 vols (London, 1885-8)Google Scholar, and Gallagher, R. H., Pioneer Preachers of Irish Methodism (Belfast, 1965), pp. 144–7 Google Scholar.
5 NIPRO MS Ouseley Collection CR 6/3 ACC 13019,28 folders of paginated MS collected and transcribed by J. O. Bonsall and enlarged by John Hay in preparation for Arthur’s biography.
6 Ouseley Coll., II fols 1-10; III fols 1-3; IV fols 1-7.
7 Ouseley Coll, XXVI fol. 4.
8 The importance of the military in the early dissemination of Irish Methodism is deserving of more attention. See Ouseley Coll., XXVI fol. 10. See also IX fol. 20; XII fols 3-5; XIII fol. 16.
9 Ibid., V fols 1-24; VI fols 1-20; XXVIII fol. 3.
10 Ibid., XXVIII fol. 4. See also NIPRO, Irish Wesley Historical Society MS, Gideon Ouseley to Matthew Tobias, 14 June 1820.
11 For the flavour of Ouseley’s labours see Bonsall’s transcription of his journal in Ouseley Coll., IX (15 July 1802 to 15 April 1803) and X (August 1804).
12 See ‘An Address from the Irish to the British Conference (Dublin 13 July 1799)’ in Irish Conference Minutes. For a more complete background to this venture see my The Methodist Crusade in Ireland 1795-1845’, Irish Historical Studies, 22 (1980), pp. 33-48.
13 Ouseley Coll., XI fol. 5; XII fol. 13; XV fol. 24; XXVIII fol. 43. See also Dow, Lorenzo, Works: Providential Experience of Lorenzo Dow in Europe and America (3rd edn., Dublin, 1806)Google Scholar.
14 Valenze, D. M., Prophetic Sons and Daughters (Princeton, 1985)Google Scholar and Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England 1790-1850 (London, 1972), pp. 45–53 Google Scholar. Ouseley approved of English Ranters and female preaching; see Ouseley Coll., XVII fols 9-10.
15 Arthur, Life of Ouseley, p. 278.
16 Ouseley Coll., XXVIII fols 7, 18-21, and 27-9.
17 Ibid., XXI fol. 21; XXVIII fol. 13. Gideon Ouseley, Calvinism-Arminianism. God’s word and Attributes in Harmony, being an Affectionate Attempt to Promote Union among Christians (Dublin, 1830).
18 Ouseley Coll., VIII fols 1 and 22-3; IX fol. 4; XVIII fols 9-14; XIX fol. 2.
19 Ibid, XXVI fols 4-5.
20 Ibid., VII fol. 10.
21 Ibid., VII fol. 12.
22 Ibid., XI fol. 23; XII fols 16-17; XX fol. 19.
23 Ouseley Coll., XXVII fols 33-4. See also IX fol. 20.
24 Anstey, Roger, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760-1810 (New Jersey, 1975), pp. 157–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 For an enlightening discussion of Methodist attitudes towards the Irish language see Ouseley Coll., XI fols 18-22 and NIPRO, Irish Wesley Historical Society MS, Adam Clarke to Gideon Ouseley, 6 December 1806, in which Clarke stated that he was not ‘willing that an ancient and dignified language should be lost’.
26 See my ‘Methodism in Irish Society, 1770-1830’, TRHS 5, series 36 (1986), pp. 117-42.
27 Arthur, Life of Ouseley, pp. 217-18.
28 Ouseley Coll., XXVIII fols o-i I.
29 Ibid.,XI fol. 2 and Arthur, Life ofOuseley, p. 175.
30 Ouseley Coll., XXVIII fol. 9.
31 Hempton, ‘Methodist Crusade’, pp. 33-47,
32 Ouseley Coll., XII fols 30-5.
33 Gideon Ouseley, The Substance of a Letter to the Rev Mr Fitzsimmons, Roman Catholic Priest on some Chief Pillars or Principal Articles of his Faith (Glasgow, 1815); Five Letters in reply to the Rev Michael Branaghan PP (Dublin, 1824); Error Unmasked. Priest Walsh’s Attack on Protestantism and its clergy defeated, his Professions proved vain, and his faith deeply erroneous (Dublin, 1828); and A Review of a Sermon preached by Dr Peter A Baynes, Roman Catholic Bishop, at the opening of the R. Catholic Chapel, in Bradford, Yorkshire (Dublin, 1829).
34 Arthur, Life of Ouseley, p. 200.
35 The best accounts of this important decade of religious conflict, though different in emphasis, are Bowen, Desmond, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland 1800-1870 (Dublin, 1978)Google Scholar, I. M. Hehir, ‘New Lights and Old Enemies: The Second Reformation and the Catholics of Ireland, 1800-1835’ (MA thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1983), and Myrtle Hill, ‘Evangelicalism and the Churches in Ulster Society, 1770-1850’ (Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1987).
36 Sligo Journal, 21 May 1823.
37 Ouseley’s views on this subsequently hardened as a result of the national education controversies and disillusionment with Maynooth College. In A Dreadful Conspiracy (1837) he stated ‘what does the experience of more than forty years of Maynooth College teach? What gratitude to a Protestant Government that has hitherto been annually expending thousands of pounds in supporting it, has ever appeared?’
38 Ouseley Coll., XX fols 19-21; XXI fols 7-9.
39 Ibid., XX fol. 20. Ouseley returned to England in 1836 and was much more impressed with the general public knowledge of Irish affairs.
40 Ibid., XXIII fols 14-15.
41 Ouseley Coll., XII fol. 36. Ouseley was told that over 3,000 people had been converted at an American camp meeting.
42 Arthur, Life of Ouseley, pp. 282-3.
43 Ouseley Coll., XVIII fol. T, XX fols 3 and 8-9; XXIII fol. 20; XXVIII fol. 12.
44 Ibid., XXII fols 14-17.
45 Ibid., XXVI fol. 6.