Act 31
The Methodists
The influence of religion and ideas
in the family history
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This
is a new experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered
podcast summarising this page. This should only be treated as an
introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong. However
it does provide an introduction to the themes of this page, which are dealt
with in more depth below. Listen to the podcast for an overview, but it
doesn’t replace the text below, which provides the accurate historical
record. |
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Hugh Bourne and Primitive Methodism
Non
Conformity into the early twentieth century |
Religion
and ideas
Pope Gregory’s mission to convert
the Angles after noticing Deiran slaves in the
Roman market in 580 CE led in time to the conversion of the Deiran
King Edwin to Christianity at Eoforwic, only 40 kilometres south of our ancestral
lands, in 627 CE. Only decades later the founding of a monastery in Lastingham was in the heart of our
ancestral home in 653 CE, only a few kilometres from the mouth of Farndale
itself. The Roman form of Christianity was accepted at the
Synod of Whitby, only 30 kilometres from our
ancestral home in 664 CE. The influence of Christianity was bound to play a
significant role in our family story from an early stage in our two thousand
year journey.
By about 685
CE a church at Kirkdale,
dedicated to the Roman Pope Gregory, was built as a focal point in the lands
where our Anglo Saxon ancestors lived. Bede
was the intellectual powerhouse of the early eighth century at nearby Jarrow
and that intellectual focus was transferred to Eoforwic, by the
late eighth century, where Alcuin and
others taught the Liberal Arts and inspired an intellectual age which would
transform European education under Charlemagne.
After a
destructive Viking period, a new Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian culture emerged, so
that in the mid eleventh century Kirkdale was rebuilt by Orm Gamalson, with its magnificent sundial, which evoked a complex
understanding of the passage of time.
Religion and
a synthesis of new ideas weaved together over time, shaping our ancestral
direction. From a historian’s perspective, the path of Christian and
intellectual thought is an inescapable influence on our family story, and of
real significance to an understanding of our ancestors.
By 1338 William
de Farndale the Younger, wandered from Haltwhistle in Northumberland to
Chelmsford in London, as parson and chaplain. Possibly influenced by the
horrors of the Black Death, another William Farndale
was the influential Vicar of Doncaster between 1397 and 1403.
By the time
our family arrived in
Cleveland in the mid sixteenth century, a new Protestant Church had split
from Rome, to which the
Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 was a local reaction in Lincolnshire and
Yorkshire and in 1569, the Rising
of the North was another local uprising against the reforms of Elizabeth I.
Those differences came to a head in the Civil War and our Moorsholm relatives
were direct witnesses to the
skirmish which occurred between Guisborough
and Skelton in 1643.
Established
religious belief were challenged in the late seventeenth century by the
Enlightenment, and by a new Victorian era of scientific
and industrial revolution which questioned the status quo. When inter
glacial age hyena bones at Kirkland
Cave, adjacent to our ancestral minster, were interpreted by the Reverend
William Buckland, he was forced to surrender his ideas that the bones were
survivors from the Biblical flood, to be replaced by a new understanding of the
passage of geological time.
Yet even John Farndale,
who embraced scientific change, remained fervently rooted to his Christian
upbringing, as did his son, Charles Farndale,
and for very many years Methodist services have been held in the
spacious farm kitchen of Mr C Farndale, Kilton Lodge, which was also that of
his father before him. Their Whitby relative William Farndale
was an ardent Methodist preacher in York and Macclesfield in the late
nineteenth century and his son, Rev
Dr William Edward Farndale became President of the Methodist Church in 1947
and then Moderator of the Free Church Council in 1948.
There is a
relationship between the history of Christianity in Britain, the evolution of
intellectual and scientific thought, and the individual stories of families who
lived there, which is enmeshed together. In this section of our story, we
explore the religious aspect on our family path.
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Exploring
the role of religions of various denominations and the evolution of
intellectual ideas on the Farndale Story |
The
Established Church
From the
acceptance of Gregory’s form of Christianity at the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE
until Henry VIII fell out with Rome in a desire to seize back sovereignty from
Europe as the only means to get his divorce, Christianity was a relatively
homogenous belief system. After the dissolution of the monasteries and the
Reformation, when the
Acts of Supremacy confirmed Henry VIII as the only supreme head of the
Church of England, the seeds were sown for centuries of dispute and Civil War
between Roman focused Catholicism and the new Anglican Church.
Elizabeth I
brought some calm and toleration back to her realm after the reign of Bloody
Mary. The Act of
Supremacy 1558 was An Acte restoring to the
Crowne its Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiasticall
and Spirituall, and abolyshing
all Forreine Power repugnaunt
to the same. The Act
of Uniformity 1559, authorised a book of common prayer which was similar to
the 1552 version but which retained some Catholic elements, and the Thirty Nine
Articles 1563 provided a compromise return to a new Anglican world. This
was the foundation of a new religion which was later called Anglicanism. “It
looked Catholic and sounded Protestant.” It was a religious middle way. It
was a compromise and perhaps the foundation of a British spirit of compromise.
It contrasted to a time of Catholic versus Protestant polarisation in Europe.
Elizabeth had little sympathy for hardliners from either wing of the religious
divide. She stopped heresy trials. This was a brave new world, though still to
be threatened for a while by Spanish invasion plans and a medley of plots. Over
time however, there were acts by her monarchy which supressed Catholicism,
which was still popular in Yorkshire. The Recusancy Acts in 1558 required
attendance at Church of England services, returning to Henry VIII’s
Reformation. Those who refused to do so were called Recusants and were brought
to Court to face penalties. In Cleveland, at first Egton,
with 9 Recusants, was the centre of protest. By 1586, Brotton had 19 presentations for Recusancy, Egton13, Hinderwell 10 and Skelton 8.
As time
passed, the Anglican Church became embedded and established into the national
hierarchy.
Methodism
The
Enlightenment which emerged after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was also a
time of religious revival. A new evangelicalism was different from the
Puritanism that dominated the Civil War period.
An
alternative to the established church emerged from Oxford undergraduates in the
1730s, particularly John
Welsey and George
Whitefield. Wesley wrote more prolifically than anyone else in the eighteenth
century. He was influenced by Locke’s philosophy to develop a practical method, hence methodism,
of piety. It grew out of the forces of the Enlightenment. It also grew within
the existing Church and found impetus in areas of rapid change, including rural
areas of the north of England and Wales, especially in industrial towns. It
attracted miners, sailors and soldiers and others. This is why there was an
emphasis on travelling preachers who gave open air services. It also had a
strong women’s movement as it gave a unique for the time important role to
women. Singing was an important part of methodism. The Wesley brothers, John
and Charles, produced 30 hymn books and composed well known hymns including Hark
the Herald Angels Sing.
Methodism
was both subversive and conservative and it was not suppressed by the Church.
From the 1750s the north, Wales and the Scottish borders boomed in population
and many became integrated into non conformist sects,
especially methodism. John Wesley’s flexible approach thrived on socio economic
change. An autonomous religious movement grew around chapels and Sunday
schools.
Mainstream
methodists attracted hard working and prosperous businessmen who were now able
to vote. In the Victorian era, non conformist,
generally Liberal religion thrived in the north, the south west and the
industrial Midlands. It tended to be less agricultural and it formed a
peripheral nationalism with a distinct character. The non conformists opposed
the public subsidy of church schools under the Education
Act 1870 as they worried that future generations would be brought up Tory
and Anglican.
In Lark
Rise, Flora Thomson wrote that the Methodists were a class apart.
Provided they did not attempt to convert others, religion in them was
tolerated.
Every
Sunday evening they held a service in one of their cottages, and, whenever she
could obtain permission at home, it was Laura's delight to attend. This was not
because the service appealed to her; she really preferred the church service;
but because Sunday evening at home was a trying time, with the whole family
huddled round the fire and Father reading and no one allowed to speak and
barely to move.
The first
thing that would have struck any one less accustomed to the place was its
marvellous cleanliness. The cottage walls were whitewashed and always fresh and
clean. The man of the house stood in the doorway to welcome each arrival with a
handshake and a whispered 'God bless you!' If the visiting preacher happened to
be late, which he often was with a long distance to cover on foot, the host
would give out a hymn from Sankey and Moody's Hymn-Book.
Sometimes
a brother or a sister would stand up to 'testify', and then the children opened
their eyes and ears, for a misspent youth was the conventional prelude to
conversion and who knew what exciting transgressions might not be revealed.
Most of them did not amount to much. One would say that before he 'found the
Lord' he had been 'a regular beastly drunkard'; but it turned out that he had
only taken a pint too much once or twice at a village feast. One man,
especially, claimed that pre-eminence. 'I wer' the
chief of sinners,' he would cry; 'a real bad lot, a Devil's disciple. Cursing
and swearing, drinking and drabbing, there were nothing bad as I didn't do.
Why, would you believe it, in my sinful pride, I sinned against the Holy Ghost.
Aye, that I did,' and the awed silence would be broken by the groans and 'God
have mercy's of his hearers while he looked round to observe the effect of his
confession before relating how he 'came to the Lord'.
But the
chief interest centred in the travelling preacher, especially if he were a
stranger who had not been there before. Then there was the elderly man who
chose for his text: 'I will sweep them off the face of the earth with the besom
of destruction', and proceeded to take each word of his text as a heading. 'I
will sweep them off the face of the earth. I will sweep them off the face of
the earth. I will sweep them off the face of the earth', and so on.
Methodism,
as known and practised there, was a poor people's religion, simple and crude.
There is an In
our time podcast on John
Wesley.
The
Methodists offered something that was not offered by the Anglican Church. The
new preachers showed a passion for the souls and a degree of compassion for the
plight of ordinary folk.
Primitive
Methodism
In the early
decades of the nineteenth century there was a growing body of opinion among the
Wesleyans that their religion was moving in directions which were a distortion,
even a betrayal, of John Wesley’s teachings. A Methodist preacher called Hugh
Bourne became the catalyst for a breakaway, to form the Primitive
Methodists, an offshoot of the principal stream of Methodism. Also known as Ranters, for their enthusiastic preaching, Primitive
Methodists were so called because they wanted a return to an earlier, purer
form of Methodism, as they felt had been intended by John Wesley, based on the
early Methodist church. Their badge of primitive stressed their belief
that they were the true guardians of the original, or primitive, form of
Methodism.
Primitive
Methodism was a nineteenth century working class movement which originated in
the Potteries, where an open air camp meeting was held at Mow
Cop in 1807, igniting a passion for the love of God which quickly
spread across the Midlands. By the end of the century there were over 200,000
members.
The sorts of
issues which divided the Primitive Methodists and the Wesleyans were these.
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Methodists |
Primitive Methodists |
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Developed a high doctrine of the Pastoral Office to justify
leadership being in the hands of the ministers. |
Focused attention on the role of lay people. |
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Were open to cultural enrichment from the Anglican tradition and
more ornate buildings. |
Stressed simplicity in their chapels and their worship. |
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Were involved with more affluent and influential urban classes. |
Concentrated their mission on the rural poor. |
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Were nervous of direct political engagement. |
Stressed the political implications of their Christian
discipleship. |
In the
context of the growing democratisation and sense of dislocation caused by the
Industrial Revolution, Primitive Methodism appealed to miners and mill
hands, farm labourers, and workers in developing factory towns. In rural areas,
Primitive Methodists often came into conflict with the Squire and Anglican
clergy, who saw them as a threat to the established order.
The
conviction that God’s love was for all, led to a concern for social
justice, and many Primitive Methodists became involved in politics, as trade
unionist leaders, Chartists, and later as Labour MPs.
George Edwards,
who championed the cause of farm labourers in Norfolk, was typical of the early
trade union leaders who developed their passion and leadership skills through
the Primitive Methodist Chapels. He started his working life at the age of six
and he was illiterate until he became involved in Primitive Methodism when he
embarked on a journey of self-education, as he recounts in From
Crow Scaring to Parliament.
By the end
of the nineteenth century the two streams of Methodism realised they had more
in common than they might have supposed. Conversations began which led to there
being the two principal partners in the union. In 1932 Primitive Methodists
joined with Wesleyan and United Methodists to form the Methodist Church.
Smaller
sects like to Quakers and Unitarians were adopted by urban and business elites.
The Quakers included Cadbury, Fry, Rowntree, Barclay, Lloyd, Swan and Hunter,
Price and Waterhouse,
Evangelism
created charities and philanthropic lobby groups.
Charles
Farndale and the Kilton Farndales
It is not
surprising perhaps that the Farndales of rural and industrial Cleveland adopted
Methodism from the early nineteenth century. In 1902 it was remembered that
for very many years services have been held in the spacious farm kitchen of Charles Farndale,
Kilton lodge, which was also that of his father before him. Methodism in the
neighbourhood and the cause of righteousness generally owes much to the high
Christian character and active interest in all good works displayed by this
devoted Methodist family. Here the preachers have always found a hearty welcome
and ministers and others who know the circuit spent under this hospitable roof.
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1838 to 1914
Charles farmed 577 acres Kilton Hall Farm. His family were staunch
supporters of the Wesleyan Church. |
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More Tea
Vicar?
Kilton Tea Party about 1910 - Mrs Ann
Farndale, Charles
Farndale, visiting vicar (The Rev W Slader, O Wardley or W Nicholson
perhaps?), Vincent Grainger (who worked on the farm) and Grace Farndale
When his son
George
Farndale (1876 to 1970) retired from farming in 1940, it was remembered
that for over a century the Farndale family have been associated with the
Loftus and Staithes Wesleyan Circuit, a connection which is soon to be severed
by the removal of Mr George Farndale from Kilton Lodge to Saltburn. A member of
the third generation of the well known family, Mr
Farndale has been a circuit official for over 20 years, and a steward for
seven. His grand father was a local preacher in the
circuit for a number of years, and the late Charles Farndale upheld the family
tradition by serving for the major period of his life as circuit official and
steward. In the outlying districts of the circuit Mr George Farndale has worked
equally hard, and stands as Trustee for many of the circuit chapels.
The story of
the Kilton Farndales,
and many other Farndale lines, is intricately woven with the spread of
Methodism.
Rev Dr
William Edward Farndale
The older William Farndale
(1859 to 1909) was a railway porter who became a local Methodist preacher and
missionary in York and later in Macclesfield, about ten kilometres north of Mop
Cop.
In August
1886, in celebration of the anniversary of the Duke of York Street Primitive
Methodist Sunday School sermons were preached in the Mission room, on Sunday,
by the newly appointed minister, the Rev W L Spooner. In the afternoon, Mr
Spooner gave an address to the parents, teachers and scholars. Yesterday
evening the annual meeting was held in the Mission room under the presidency of
Mr Mansfield. There was a good attendance, and the large gallery was occupied
by the Sunday school children. Addresses were given by the chairman, the Rev W
L Spooner, and Mrs Joseph Croft, W Farndale, and others. Many recitations,
dialogues and hymns were given by the school children in their credit
creditable manner. Collections were made at each service in aid at the school
funds. Sadly the Rev W L Spooner, who William Farndale spoke alongside, was
not the same person as the famous Rev William Archibald Spooner who lived at
the same time and was most notable for his absent-mindedness, and for mixing up
syllables with unintentionally comic effect.
On 14
January 1889 a new venture of faith was started in Macclesfield when the
town mission was opened. The first missionary was Mr Farndale, who is still
remembered by some of the older members. He and those who have followed have
established a fine tradition of Christian service. He later worked as a
baker, confectioner and grocer alongside his missionary work, but his end was
tragic. In February 1909, a pathetic letter was read at an inquest on the
body of William Farndale, 50, a grocer, who lived at in Hesketh Avenue,
Didsbury. He was found hanging in the cellar of his shop in School Lane on
Tuesday. Before hanging himself in the cellar of his grocer’s shop in Didsbury,
William Farndale wrote a note in which he said he was past living. “My mind has
gone, and the hope of life has died out. I have tried and failed. Misfortune
has seemed to follow me.”
William Farndale’s son was Rev
Dr William Edward Farndale (1881 to 1966) entered the Primitive Methodist
ministry in 1904. He led circuits in London, Oldham, Chester-le-Street,
Birkenhead and Grimsby before he became President of the Primitive Methodist
Conference in 1947. He was particularly interested in rural methodism and led a
Back to the Soil campaign. In 1947, a new “forward”
movement in the Methodist Church “to Evangelise and Christianise Rural England”
was launched today by the Church’s president, the Rev William Farndale, who
told the conference at Newcastle on Tyne that the last great forward movement
was on behalf of the great cities and led to the establishment of mission
centres amid crowded populations. This time it was to be in the countryside,
with the slogan: “On to victory, victory in the villages.” “There is an acute
feeling,” said the president, “that the state and the churches have been out of
close touch with the realities and intimacies of village life. Policies and
programmes which may have first class relevancy to conditions in towns, have
been superimposed on the countryside, where circumstances have been of a quite
different order. The President said it would be the height of folly to ignore
the new developments under the recent Acts, which were providing a far higher
standard of education in the villages. The many activities of the service of youth
have had effects that will prove cumulative, he said, and must be reckoned with
any church anxious now to fulfil its mission in the villages. Here is a new
mission field, needy, urgent, but promising, opening out before us.
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Rev Dr William
Edward Farndale 1881 to 1966
The influential Primitive
Methodist who became head of the Methodist Church shortly after the Second
World War |
Temperance
and social influence
The non conformist conscience extended to politics in promoting
its moral code. William Wilberforce’s influence extended beyond anti slavery to animal protection and religious education.
The John Keble’s Oxford Movement in the 1820s was a High Church revolt against
Anglicanism.
The
temperance movement pursued regulation against access to drink and alcohol
consumption declined from the 1870s. Drink was seen to be at the heart of
moral, social and economic problems. In the 1850s reformers campaigned against
beer and ale houses as the direct causes of crimes. Places of popular
entertainment were targeted. Temperance built up a large organised following
focused around churches, chapels and Sunday school. However drinking culture
was also central to social life and there were only really local successes in
the control of drink, although there was a general decline in drinking in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Temperance measures never came close to
those in Wales and US. There is an In Our Time podcast on the Temperance Movement.
Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these
same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get
drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a
medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with
other tabular statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they took
opium. Then came the experienced
chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous
tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low
haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low
dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next
birthday, and committed for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not
that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began,
as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a
tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr.
Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking
through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more
tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated
by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared—in short, it
was the only clear thing in the case—that these same people were a bad lot
altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful
for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew
what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and
insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet
were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable.
In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:
There was an old woman, and what do
you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals
and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of
her diet,
And yet this old woman would never be
quiet.
(Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter V, The Keynote)
In March
1917 a public temperance meeting organised by the local British Women's
Temperance Association, Good Templars, Rechabites and members of the Primitive
Methodist and Wesleyan Churches was held at Birtley, in favour of prohibition
during the war and for six months afterwards. This is the first united
gathering of all the local temperance organisations that has taken place in
Birtley, certainly during recent years. The Rev
W E Farndale presided and said in these days it was imperative that what at
best was a only a luxury, and at worse a curse should absolutely cease to be
produced, and that no intoxicating liquor should be sold during the war. We
could not afford it. The waste of corn and sugar involved in its manufacture
was criminal, and the use of shipping for its importation was a sin against
humanity. Governments are supposed to lead but they cannot move very far in
advance of public opinion and it was the bounden duty of such organisations as
those represented to create that volume of conviction of strong commanding
appeal which would give a backing and they pushed to those in authority.
In 1929 the
May monthly meeting of the Grimsby Branch of the British Women’s Total
Abstinence Union was held at the Heneage Road Wesleyan Church. Mrs Thompson
presided and the Rev W E Farndale spoke on “Democracy and drink.”
In November
1929 the British Women's Total Abstinence Union are making a special effort
to secure the signatures of a million women to a petition addressed to the
Prime Minister asking for national Sunday closing for England. A Bill to secure
Sunday closing has already been drafted at the request of a very large and
representative conference. Every denomination in the land is concerned in this
important temperance measure. On Sunday evening at the Ebenezer church, the Rev
W E Farndale will make special reference to this movement in the sermon on the
relation between the Christian Sabbath and Sunday closing.
In December
1939 the Lincoln branch of the
National British Women's Total Abstinence Union held their December meeting
yesterday at Clasketgate schoolroom. Mrs W Sindell presided and Mrs F W Farndale gave a talk on
Finland and its prohibition laws.
In November
1940 a well attended meeting of the National
British Women's Total Abstinence Union, Lincoln branch, was held by invitation
of councillor and Mrs J W Lawson, at Greylands Place,
Lee Road, Lincoln. Mrs W Sindell (president) presided
and an address was given by the Rev W E Farndale on temperance work from the
time of the Napoleonic works wars to the present. Mrs Farndale, County Union
President, told of the county branches efforts to raise funds for a mobile canteen
for Lincolnshire.
or
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