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The Magic Methodists and Their Influence on the Early Primitive Methodist Movement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The role of the Magic Methodists and their leader James Crawford at the beginning of Primitive Methodism has been widely debated. As a group noted for signs, wonders and miracles, they helped to provide the necessary experience and enthusiasm for a new revivalist movement. In the image of a poor agricultural labourer, Crawfoot represented a rustic and earthy beginning for a denomination that prided itself on its success amongst the poor. However, as a man ‘unpolished by learning and refinement… strangely odd and uncouth in argument’, he was a controversial figure. To successive generations of Primitive Methodists Crawfoot with his associated supernaturalism was an embarrassment.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2005
References
1 For the most recent account see Henry D. Rack, James Crawfoot and the Magic Methodists, Anniversary Lecture at Englesea Brook Chapel and Museum (Englesea Brook, 2003).
2 John Walford, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne, 2 vols (London, 1856, repr. Totton, 1999), 1: 204.
3 John Petty in The History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion from its Origin to the Conference of 1989 (2nd edn, London, 1864), and Walford, Memoirs, are critical of Crawfoot and his group, while William Antliff in The Life of Hugh Bourne, founder of the Primitive Methodist Connexion (2nd edn, London, 1892), and George Herod, Biographical Sketches of some of those preachers whose labours contributed to the origination and early extension of the Primitive Methodism Connexion... (London, 1855), are more sympathetic.
4 As described some years later and recorded in Walford, Memoirs, 1:154–5.
5 John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Methodist Archives and Research Centre [hereafter: MARC], MS Bourne Autobiography, DDHB 2/1 (A) 39.
6 Antliff, Life of Hugh Bourne, 64, and Petty, History, 36–7.
7 Autobiography, DDHB, 2/1 (A) 29.
8 John Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London, 1978), 59.
9 Julia Stewart Werner, The Primitive Methodist Connexion: its Background and Early History (Madison, WI, 1984), 32; Kenneth Lysons, A Little Primitive (Buxton, 2001), 44.
10 Methodist Magazine (1807), 452.
11 H. B. Kendall, History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion (London, c.1890), 35.
12 Autobiography, DDHB 2/1 (A) 30; H. B. Kendall, The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church, 2 vols (London, 1906), 2: 83–4.
13 Kendall, Origin and History, I: 147; MARC, MS Bourne Journal, DDHB 3; The Journal of William Clowes (London, 1844).
14 Journal, DDHB 2/1 (A) 33, 41.
15 Kendall, History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, 9.
16 Ibid., 23.
17 Werner, Primitive Methodist Connexion, 75.
18 Journal, DDHB 3/4, 3 November 1808.
19 Ibid, 14 November 1808.
20 Journal, DDHB 3/6, March and May 1810, DDHB 3/7, April, June and July 1811.
21 Journal, DDHB 3/6,28 March 1810.
22 Ibid, 24 March 1809.
23 Rack, Henry D., Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London, 1989), 195–7, 432–5 Google Scholar.
24 Autobiography, DDHB 2/1 (A) 39.
25 Rack, Henry D., How Primitive was Primitive Methodism? An Examination of Some Characters and Characteristics (Englesea Brook, 1996)Google Scholar.
26 Journal, DDHB 3/6,5 October 1810.
27 Ibid., 9 June 1810.
28 Walford, Memoirs, 1: 300; Journal, DDHB 3/7, 23 October 1810.
29 Autobiography, DDBH 2/1 (A) 67; Antliff, Life of Hugh Bourne, 80.
30 Journal, DDHB 3/6, 3 October 1810.
31 Walford, Memoirs, 1:309.
32 Journal, DDHB 3/6, 17 November 1809; Autobiography, DDHB 2/1 (A) 75.
33 Autobiography, DDHB 2/1 (A) 40; Herod, Biographical Sketches, 249; Rack, James Crawfoot, 3.
34 Crawfoot recalled Wesley’s use of the phrase in 1790 – although Crawfoot’s memory is disputed: see Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society xxxvi (1967), 64.
35 Journal, DDHB 3/2,13 April 1808.
36 Journal, DDHB 3/3,28 June 1808; Antliff, Life of Hugh Bourne, 81.
37 Walford, Memoirs, 1:283.
38 Lysons, A Little Primitive, 47–8.
39 Kendall, Origin and History, 150.
40 Ibid.
41 Kendall, Origin and History, 1:151; Walford, Memoirs, 1: 157.
42 This is suggested by J. T. Wilkinson, the most revered twentieth-century biographer of Bourne, in a letter dated 17 March 1958: the document was found in a book at the JRULM and is not catalogued.
43 Journal, DDHB 3/7, 26 November 1811.
44 Autobiography, DDHB 2/1 (A), 45, 59–60, 71–2, 74, 77.
45 Journal, DDHB 3/7, February to April 1813; Herod, Biographical Sketches, 267–8.
46 Michael Sheard, ‘The Origins and Early Development of Primitive Methodism in Cheshire and South Lancashire, 1800–1860’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1980, 65.
47 Rack,James Crawfoot, 13, n. 45.
48 Journal, DDHB 3/7, 22 December 1811; Journal, DDHB 2/1 (A), 75.
49 Herod, Biographical Sketches, 268.
50 Sheard, ‘Origins and Early Development of Primitive Methodism’, 74, states that the visions were a major part of the dispute.
51 Journal, DDHB 3/7, 29 December 1811.
52 Journal, DDHB 3/7, 9 April 1813.
53 Rack, How Primitive, 17.
54 Journal, DDHB 3/7, 7 March, 12 April and 15 April 1813.
55 Herod, Biographical Sketches, 271.
56 Kendall, Origin and History, 1: 149.
57 Kendall, History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, 114.
58 Kendall, Origin and History, 1: 288.
59 John T. Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne, 1772–1852 (London, 1952), 118.
60 Sheard, ‘Origins and Early Development of Primitive Methodism’, 805–7; Lysons, A Little Primitive, 45.
61 E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Norms of Social Movement in the 1 gth and 20th Centuries (Manchester, 1959), 129, 135–9.
62 Rupert Davies and Gordon Rupp, eds, A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, 4 vols (London, 1965–88), 2: 163.
63 Kent, Holding the Fort, 40, 42.