Black country Methodism

Front matter

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( School of Theology )

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Contents

PAR 7 /.

BEFORE NOAH’s ARK . . . .

PREPARING FOR “XHE ARK ”

Chapter I. Before Noah S Ark

W HEN the Rev. Mr. Holland was the minister stationed in the Wolverhampton Circuit of Wesleyan Methodists, he recounted, at a meeting held in Darlington Street Chapel in that town, the length, and breadth, and height, and depth ofWesleyanism in the Circuit, and had barely finished his glowing account when an ancient dame confounded the orator and threw the audience into a convulsion of laughter by raising her hands and her eyes, and, in tones of astounded thankfulness, exclaiming, “ And to think it has all come out of Noah’s Ark ! The Lord be praised 1 Hallelujah ! ” The “ Noah’s Ark ” she alluded to was not that of Noah, nor the ancient hostelry of that name which fronted old Lichfield Street in Wolverhampton, but a little chapel erected at the back of that inn,"and which for the first quarter of this century contained all that Wolverhampton could once

•2

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boast of Wesleyan Methodism. Taking its name from the public-house behind which it hid its light, it was known as “ Noah’s Ark Chapel.” The old lady was right. Big as Methodism is now in Wolverhampton and its immediate neighbourhood, it came out of “ the Ark.” But then, like the strange animals and queer fishes which were once in Noah’s Ark, it had to be got in before it could be got out ; and it will be found ere I have done with its local history that that history divides itself, very much like a sermon, and also like history in relation to old Noah’s Ark itself, into three heads — Before the Ark, In the Ark, and After the Ark ; and as the third head is still going ahead, the reader will be cheered by the fact that any “ application ” on my part would be untimeous and out of place.

But to my discourse — Firstly, Before the Ark. Well, I am afraid that the aspect of Wolverhampton before the time of its Ark was so far like that of the world before the Ark that at last rested on Mount Ararat, that the number of those who were pious and abstemious was very few compared with the number of those whose principal god was the spirit of fleshly appetite. I confine myself to the latter half of the last century, when John Wesley was frequently in the Black Country, warning the people, like Noah of old, to “flee from the wrath to come.” All he sought from them was an expression of anxiety to flee from that “ wrath to come,” and it is a fact to this day that all that is required from any applicant for membership with the Wesleyan body is the expression of an anxiety to flee from the wrath to come, and the leading of a life in conformity with the expression of faith in such wrath. John Wesley was perhaps the first man of that age to preach coming “ wrath ” with a fervour that betokened faith in the doctrine. Too many of the clergy preached it so coldly and lived so pleasurably as to carry conviction that they themselves foresaw no such wrath, and that the contemplation of the future need not interfere with ^

the enjoyment of the present. In Wolverhampton fifty years |

BEFORE NOAH’S ARE.

I ago the town could boast of only three churches and several chapels. What must it have been about seventy years previously, when there was but one church and one chapel ? Then, too, the few magistrates and constables of those days were as sleepy as the few parsons, ordained and unordained ; and, provided a man was ignorant enough, and poor enough, and stupid enough not to trouble them, they would not trouble their heads about him. Ignoramuses were almost as plentiful as heads then, poverty was more abundant than ever it has been since, and nobody was wise enough in those days to dam out inflowing stupidity with a blue ribbon. The majority were left to get on as best they could, the minority taking care only that they did not get on too well. Do you wonder then that when those above them who counted I themselves, and were accounted by all others, “ great,”

I were thus contented and at rest with the masses, the said

4 masses should count it an impertinent and offensive in-

I trusion when one man came and threatened them, with

I “ wrath to come ” for being what Church and State had

I made them, and for being what those great “ bulwarks of

I England’s greatness ” were quite content they should be ? If within our own times there has been some truth in Fu/t{:Es portraitme of manners in some parts of the district — “ A stranger, ’eave ’arf a brick at him ! ” — what must have been the state of things in “ the old Black Country ” more than one hundred and twenty years ago, when a stranger came with such a cry and such condemnation in his mouth ; and can we wonder that an urchin, ignorant of shoes and stockings, and whose other garments mainly consisted of a greasy pair of leather breeches, should heave a stone at him when he gave plain utterance to his uncomplimentary and unsoothing convictions ? Such a stranger to Wolverhampton was John Wesley when he stood on the steps leading to the I old-fashioned door of a shop in what is now known as I Queen Square, Wolverhampton, and told the surging crowd before him what he thought of them. There, hearing what

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he said in that behalf, and nerved to the act by the attitude and cries of his elders, young Mosely threw a stone at the preacher with such aim that blood trickled down the preacher’s face. Young Mosely, seeing this, waited for no more Methodism, but took refuge in flight.

According, however, to his firm belief, professed at many a Methodist lovefeast in after years, Methodism followed the young stone-thrower, at first in wrath and then in mercy. It was some time after, while drinking with some shopmates at the “ Four Ashes,” in Stafibrd Street, and dropping his head to avoid a frolicsome blow, that he dashed his right eye against the corner of the screen, and destroyed it and its sight for evermore. This came upon him, he thought, as a judgment for having stoned John Wesley. He reflected on the warning, became a good Wesleyan, and died as such, upwards of ninety years of age, at Wolverhampton, some eight-and-twenty years ago.

Such, according to -those alive who heard it, was his “ experience,” as given by himself at many a lovefeast. True, the published extracts from the Journals of Mr. Wesley, in which there are references to many visits he paid to Wolverhampton, make no mention of his having suffered any violence there ; and though, as a rule, the records of his going here, there, and everywhere, up and down the country, during his long and itinerant life, are necessarily little more than records of names and dates, yet he was so rarely assaulted, however often he might be threatened, that if it were a fact that he was so struck by a stone at Wolverhampton as to draw blood, however slightly, the incident could hardly have escaped observation in his well-kept Journals. Other unwritten testimony, however, makes it pretty clear that Mr. Wesley did address a tumultuous crowd from the shop steps in question on the erewhile High Green of Wolverhampton, and that on another occasion he preached in the yard of the old Swan Inn, which occupied the site of the present Midland Bank in Dudley Street.

BEFORE NOAH'S ARE.

The latter must have been the first occasion on which either he or any Methodist minister preached in the open air in the town, for he records under date March 17th, 1761 : — On returning from Shrewsbury I came to Wolverhampton. None had yet preached abroad in this furious town ; but I was resolved, with God’s help, to make such a trial, and ordered a table to be set in the inn yard. Such a number of wild men I have seldom seen ; but they gave me no disturbance, either while I preached, or when I afterwards walked through the midst of. them.” His Journal tells of a visit he paid the previous year to the town. He had been to Dudley, where the “ wild men ” seemed to have been tamed, for under date Saturday, March 8th, 1760, he expresses his surprise on coming to Wolverhampton, “ which is what Dudley was,” at finding “ the people so still. Many gaped and stared ” about, but neither whilst he was preaching nor afterwards “ did any one offer the least rudeness whatever,” and he was allowed to ride quietly out of the town. On this occasion the preaching of Mr. Wesley was not “ abroad,” but must have been at the house of some one of his few followers in the town ; and the surprise he expresses at being permitted to enter and leave the town unmolested tells of the violence of the times, and the sorry life his followers led at first in Wolverhampton. That troublesome period formed at least the first decade of their denominational existence, for the next entry in Mr. Wesley’s Journals is under date March 23rd, 1768, recording that “After preaching at several places I rode on to Wolverhampton. Here all was quiet, only those who could not get into the house made a little noise for a time ; and some hundreds attended me to my lodgings, but it was with no other intent than to stare.” Upon the occasion of his next visit, March 2 1 St, 1770, he found that “ Many here were wild and stupid enough; however the greater part were deeply attentive.” This probably refers to some general out-door audience, though doubtless many of the new converts of those days

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might be somewhat “ wild,” and some “ stupid enough.” That they improved with time is shown by the negative evidence that with regard to his next recorded visit to the town Mr. Wesley is content simply to state the fact that he preached at Wolverhampton, Monday, July 14th, 1773. He was there again in the spring of the following year, for says, under date Monday, March 21st, 1774* “I preached at nine in Darlaston, and about noon at Wolverhampton. Here I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Fletcher, and we took sweet counsel together. Tuesday, 22nd: At five I explained that important truth, that God is wdth us every moment, weighs all our thoughts, words, and actions, and is pleased or displeased with us according to our work. I see more and more clearly that there is a great gulf fixed between us and all those who, by denying this, sap the very foundation both of inward and outward holiness. At ten I preached at Dudley, and in the afternoon spent some time in viewing Mr. Bolton’s works, wonderfully ingenious, but the greater part of them wonderfully useless.” Next morning he was preaching at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and when one remembers what travelling was in those days, one can but marvel at the man who thus began preaching at five o’clock in the morning, pursued his studies on horseback as he toiled along’ almost impassable roads, and yet found time to compile more books, as well as to preach more sermons, than any other man of his day.

By 1776 Wesleyanism w^as everywhere gathering strength and numbers, and Mr. Wesley records that on Friday, April 29th of that year, he “preached to a very large congregation even at Wolverhampton.” He was there again on March 23rd, 1779. He was at Birmingham, Dudley, and Wednesbury in the same month of 1781, but in his note of the fact he does not mention Wolverhampton, saying that on Monday, March 26th, “ I preached at noon in Mr. Barker’s large parlour, at Penkridge. Many stood in the next room, and many in the garden, near the windows,

BEFORE NOAH'S ARE.

and I believe all could hear. I brought strange things to the ears of those who had been used to softer doctrines : and I believe not in vain. They seemed to receive the truth in the love thereof.” He was in more refined society than that of his followers in Wolverhampton when he was again in its neighbourhood on May 25th, 1783, “In the afternoon of which day I reached Hilton Park, about six miles north of Wolverhampton. Here I found my old acquaintance Miss Freeman, whom I had known almost from a child, with Sir Philip Gibbes’s lady and his two amiable daughters in a lonely recess. With these I spent this evening and the next day, both profitably and agreeably.” On Monday, March 28th, 1785, he again paid this “ amiable family ” a visit, but not until after he had preached at Wolverhampton in the morning. Tw’O years after, under date March 28th, 1787, he writes: “In the evening I opened the new house at Wolverhampton, nearly as large as that at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It would not near contain the people, though they were wedged together as close as possible. I believe such a congregation was never seen in Wolverhampton before ; not only so serious, but so well behaved. I hope this is a token for good.” He found it was so, for, writing on March 27th in the following year, he records : “ About noon I preached at Dudley, and with much liberty of spirit, but with far more at Wolverhampton in the evening, the new house being sufficiently crowded. What a den of lions was this town for many years ! But now, it seems, the last will be first.” His last record of Wolverhampton is dated Tuesday, March 23rd, 1790, and is as follows : “ About one I preached in the new house at Dudley, one of the neatest in England. It was a profitable season, when two persons, they informed me, found peace with God. We had a pleasant ride to Wolverhampton.”

Chapter II. Preparing For “ The Ark.”

W HATEVER there may be of fault or exaggeration in the tale told by, or of, old Mosely the Locksmith, he was a typical convert to Methodism in its younger days in “ the Old Black Country ” — one of the “ wild men,” at whom, as we have seen, John Wesley wrote himself down so astonished. Yet, though wild enough then, the handicraftsmen of Wolverhampton were, thanks to some training in more or less skilled workmanship, intellectually superior to colliers and labourers in the ironworks. In morals and in matters spiritual they could boast no such superiority. It is believed old Mosely himself had, as a boy, started on the road of life and Wolverhampton from a workhouse, slaving from early morn till late at night at heavy stock-lock making for the coarsest of food, the barest of raiment, and plenteous physical suffering for not, as a boy, doing twice as much as any man would do now. Such boys grew up to be men, but only then to toil like brutes, and squander what toil brought in the public-house and the cock-pit, varied by pugilistic encounters among themselves and holiday diversions with bulls and bears. Methodism came and lifted these men up, as no other ’ism of that day could. True, it first knocked them down. It told them very plainly that they were not men, but devils, rushing headlong to

PREPARING FOR “ THE ARK.

eternal torment. This was black enough, and ugly and provocative enough, and their first impulse was to knock the man down who gave them such a character, and they often did it. But there was a silver lining to this black cloud of “the wrath to come.” Lo, in the twinkling of an eye, by faith, they might be changed from devils of darkness to angels of light — from slaves to freemen. By faith all things were to be made profitable to them, as well in this life as in the life to come. Coupled with the “ present salvation ” to eternal life was intellectual, moral, social, and material gain in this world.

Methodism was, in fact, the great bloodless, religious, and social revolution of England of the eighteenth century which saved the country from such a bloody revolution as that which deluged France before that century closed. The pious Wesleyans in England, as the impious Atheists did afterwards in France, discoursed to the mob in street and market-place on equality and fraternity, and besought them to rise and be free. Both alike told the multitude they were miserable, down-trodden, mean, enslaved, yet — could, if they would, be “great, glorious, and free.” The simple difference between the Christian and the political democrat was the method each taught for the recovery of that which was lost. While the one preached, “ Lay hold on heavenly grace, be better yourselves, and the world will be better,” the other said, “ Lay hold on sword and gun, mount the barricades, make the world better, and then you will be better.” Seeing that for all human life purposes “ the world ” is made up of those who live in it, there was more sound logic and plain common sense in the Methodist doctrine of Wesley’s days than in that of the afterwards boasted “ Age of Reason.”

Though they had no bands and banners, the Wesleyans of a hundred years ago were as demonstrative, as self-asserting, as ignorant, and as despised and rejected as the Salvationists of these days, and their teaching and practice lO

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were as unwelcome to the middle and upper classes around them as are the teaching and practice of “the Army but then, as now, the equality and fraternity doctrine and practice led the very lowest into a higher life by the very fact of placing them in a position there. Hundreds and thousands fell, but hundreds and thousands, awakened to new life and energy by the very fact of the recognition of their right to hold it by a higher law than any men and manners could make, kept their place. They who have gone beneath the surface of the character of the rougher classes know that with the larger proportion of them this would be the natural result of such a recognition of worth and merit in them even in these days of “government by and for the people;” how much more then must it not have been the case in days when votes that were given to pigstyes were denied to the people ; when the heads of the million were as destitute of knowledge as their other extremities were of shoe leather, and religion was made up of lean learning and fat livings ? But the position was vastly strengthened by the conviction that this natural result was based on a supernatural foundation ; that this call to a higher life was a Divine call ; and that it was directly and personally with God they had to deal; and that He personally and directly dealt with each one of them. What would they care for cathedrals and churches who were convinced that they themselves were “ temples of the Holy Ghost ” ? Mr. Wesley might exhort them to go to church, but they preferred his example to his precept, and loved better to sing and pray and have lovefeasts with the converted in back kitchens than to join in the services of the unconverted in the parish church — prayers which, in their exalted views, but mocked the Creator to Whom they were offered.

For long years the early Wesleyans thus worshipped in private houses, and it was in such houses that Mr. Wesley preached to them on the occasion of the greater number of the visits he paid to Wolverhampton. They had only got

PREPARING FOR THE ARK.

another step towards a chapel, and were nine years from “Noah’s Ark,” when, “in the evening” of Wednesday, March 28th, 1787, he, as recorded in his Journal, “opened the new house at Wolverhampton.” By the use of the term “ new house ” it is evident that before this the Wesleyans of the town had so far combined their forces as to have some fixed house or room in which they met for public worship ; but where it was situate there is no legend or record to show. There is little doubt that “ the new house ” which Mr. Wesley opened was the large meeting-room in what is now known as Canal Street, from which the Wesleyans progressed when they took possession of Noah’s Ark Chapel. It was situated on the right-hand side of then Rotton Row, on the town side of the Dog and Partridge ; and, as evidence of the darkness amid which the Wesleyan light burned there, this meeting place, for long years after they left it, served as a stable for the bull which was annually baited at the bottom of Rotton Row on the anniversary of Tettenhall Wake. That the wake bull was baited there, and not at Tettenhall, was accounted for by the alleged historic fact that the Wolverhampton roughs, on the occasion of one Tettenhall Wake, stole the bull from Tettenhall, and held that portion of the sports ever after at Wolverhampton. Whether the stolen bull lived until such brutalities came to an end, or why the Tettenhallites did not get another bull, does not appear. That the cruel sport lasted so long in Rotton Row after the Wesleyans had left it, and that, comparatively small as was the room in which they met there, Mr. Wesley found in it “ such a congregation as was never seen in Wolverhampton before,” are facts which point to a very rotten state of religion and morals in Wolverhampton generally, and in Rotton Row in particular, a hundred years and more ago.

It will have been seen by my extracts from his Journal that Mr. Wesley visited Wolverhampton or the neighbourhood about the spring of every year. In addition, the little

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society would receive periodical visits from the itinerant preacher attached to the circuit. Wesleyan circuits in those days were very large, and their ministers were so truly itinerant that they had to be provided with a horse to enable them to make their round of preaching and class-examining visits of the several societies included in each circuit. “ The travelling preacher ” of the circuit in which Wolverhampton was situate always stayed when coming from its northern extreme at Coven, where the first Methodist of any note was one John Smith, a locksmith. His home at first was an exceedingly humble one — a bit of a workshop, one sitting and one sleeping-room, and a small garden. When the travelling preacher came, his horse was provided with stabling in the village, and its rider occupied the only bed and bedroom in the house, the pious and hospitable host and hostess disposing themselves for the night in the best way they could in the common sitting-room. Smith felt more the straits of the minister than his own, and he and his wife resolved to see what hard work and thrift and the blessing of God would do to extend the “ accommodation for man and beast,” and make it “good.” The work and the thrift were blessed, and Smith enlarged his borders, and they went on enlarging until, two generations afterwards, travelling preachers, long after they ceased to travel much, found no better or heartier entertainment than with the Smiths of Coven.

It would have argued but scant faith indeed in Smith of old, if he had not ascribed his larger ground and increased bedrooms to supernatural agency, for his neighbours did so ; and, observing how his prosperity increased with the ministerial visits, and coming to the conclusion that the preacher brought fortune with him in the substantial bags his horse had to carry as well as the rider, many followed Smith’s example. Seeing that the saddle-bags contained much of the raw material of the improving discourses which Smith practically carried out to his own improvement,

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village wisdom was not so much at fault as village wisdom is sometimes apt to be.

There were many other Smiths, who did and did not meddle with cold iron, who worked out of poverty and obscurity into comparative abundance, worldly ease, and social distinction by hammering out Gospel truth on the anvil of duty ; and their neighbours, taking note of their advance, found conscience stirred by interest, and followed their example, and thus Wesleyanism became fruitful to the building of trade and commerce and good citizenship as well as of “the Ark.”

Till that “ Ark ” was fairly afloat there was no resident minister, and the gaps between the visits of Mr. Wesley and the truly travelling preacher were filled up by the “local preacher,” an outcome of the great theological “ equality and fraternity” doctrines and practices of John Wesley. Providing the man was full of the Holy Ghost, it mattered little whether he was learned ; and John Wesley would have been the first to admit that his great movement had verified the prophecy of John Wycliff and brought about the time when a poor ploughman should read and understand the New Testament better than many a learned prelate of the Wycliff age. History does not tell whether any ploughman was employed in preparing for “ the Ark” in Wolverhampton ; but several old Methodists of the town can tell me of a locksmith who so laboured. His name was Riley, and he was a small master in his trade, who resided in one of the many houses to be found in the upper part of Brickkiln Street, telling how pleasant must have been the small workshops attached to roomy little houses, when both alike were refreshed with pure air and green fields. When Riley was young and strong, and the circuit took in Shrewsbury, he would leave his smith’s shop on the Saturday evening, walk to Shrewsbury to preach three sermons on the Sunday, and, the third service ended, would walk back again and be at work on Monday morning. What physical strength, and animal as well as moral courage, w'as needed in a man to undertake and execute such a task in the days of bad roads, infested with footpads and highwaymen ! Once he was waylaid and roughly handled, but being a tall, wiry man, and, before his conversion, skilled in pugilistic and wrestling encounters, he quickly beat his assailants off and returned safely home.

Of such stuff were the local preachers, leaders, and others made, who a century and more ago prepared W olverhampton for its Wesleyan ark.

I CHAPTER III.

ENTERING THE ARK.

' t 'HE Noah’s Ark was a famous old inn in the old times, J. depending for its custom more upon what it had in than what it showed outside. As it looked at last it showed i a great gateway without a gate, and a flat-faced shop-like

I window, with small features of paned glass of an antique

” green, lit up with a roseate hue on a winter’s evening by the

glorious fire which glowed monstrously in one of the huge I open fireplaces of those days. Here on market days substantial farmers and graziers consorted with fat butchers and 'g keen dealers in thrashed grain, drove hard bargains, ate

^ huge joints at dinner, and drank much ale before and after ;

^ while their substantial and heavily built apologies for “ traps ”

crowded the yard at the bottom of the gateway without I a gate, and their horses filled the stables. All was old-fashioned without and within. Many of the strange overhanging stories of the neighbouring houses told of the : Tudor age.

;* The Noah’s Ark Inn stood, as it does now in its new

5 form of the Posada, directly opposite the street that was once

J the only outlet to Staflbrd and Canal Streets, but when the

1 Posada was “ Noah’s Ark,” and had an old-fashioned, roomy

1 inn yard, one could go through the gateway without a gate,

I cross the yard, and find one’s way down a narrow passage i6 BLACK COUNTRY METHODISM.

into Wheeler’s Fold, immediately opposite to the gateway with a gate that led up to the old Swan Hotel yard and stabling, where John Wesley had a table brought out, and scandalised all good church people, who had never learned what truly constitutes apostolic descent, by preaching to a surging crowd in the open air, just as though he was no better than Peter or Paul. The Dean, if he had not farmed the Deanery to a money-changer, or a factor (it does not matter to my present purpose which was in residence at the time), and gone away altogether, would never have thought of doing anything of the kind. Whether the back entrance to the King’s Head, in King Street, then opened out in anything like the apology for a ginshop it afterwards became, by the side of the gateway to the back of the Swan, the oldest inhabitant saith not, but something in the shape of the Pig and Whistle was in existence a little higher up the fold ; so that when the Wesleyans looking out for a site for a chapel raised their tabernacle at the back of the Noah’s Ark Inn, faced the back of the Swan and the King’s Head, and had the Pig and Whistle and the forerunner of the Greyhound as right and left-hand supporters, they were certainly not troubled with that blue ribbon prejudice to public house propinquity which brings ruin to licensed victuallers in these days. But then what they wanted in disrespect for the public-house they made up in absolute horror of the theatre, and it so happened that the only theatre in Wolverhampton then, and for long after all who had been saved in Noah’s Ark Chapel had got out of it, was to be found in the Swan Inn yard; and across the narrow contortion of a separating gullet which formed that part of Wheeler’s Fold the roar of the clown on the stage on one side must have mocked the prayers of many a “band” meeting on the other. The seeming anomaly of such a site for a chapel is accounted for by fidelity to the Wesleyan direction to go first where most wanted, in the Wesleyan sense of wants and needs. Besides, the addition of the chapel to Noah’s