These are the Preface and first two chapters of my narrative history book telling the story of a long-forgotten scandal within the Methodist community in the north of England in the 1820s. Any comments are more than welcome. (I apologise, by the way, for the various infelicities introduced -- absence of page numbers, non-consecutive footnotes, variable fonts, etc -- by the act of uploading here. I'd sort them if I could.)
A DREADFUL PIT IN SHIELDS
The Libelling of Miss Jane Bell by the Rev. Thomas Hill
by
KEN ROSS
Preface_______________________________
On
February the Second 1826, Sir Walter Scott received an unexpected visitor at
his Edinburgh home. As he records the event in his journal:
An odd visit this morning from Miss
Jane Bell of North Shields, whose law-suit with a Methodist parson of the name
of Hill made some noise. The worthy divine had in the basest manner interfered
to prevent this lady's marriage by two anonymous letters, in which he contrived
to refer the lover, to whom they were addressed, for further corroboration to
himself. The whole imposition makes the subject of a little pamphlet published
by Marshall, Newcastle. The lady ventured for redress into the thicket of
English law -- lost one suit -- gained another, with £300 damages, and was
ruined. The appearance and person of Miss Bell are prepossessing. She is about
thirty years old, a brunette, with regular and pleasing features, marked with melancholy,
– an enthusiast in literature, and probably in religion. She had been at
Abbotsford to see me, and made her way to me here, in the vain hope that she
could get her story worked up into a novel.
To say
that the visit was ‘odd’ is something of an understatement. To arrive
unannounced at the door of the most famous writer of the day on such an errand
was surely unprecedented. It was also, looked at rationally, the longest of
long-shots. Nothing in Scott’s output suggests for a moment that he would have
been interested in fictionalising contemporary events. The overwhelming
majority of his novels were historical, and on the rare occasions he set
stories in his own times he drew on his personal experience for locale and
favoured plots of romantic action and adventure. To think that he would even consider writing
about a series of happenings whose interest would be predominately
psychological, occurring in a place he had never been, amongst a Methodist
community whose mores were unfamiliar, suggests a substantial degree of
ignorance or desperation or both.
Ignorance
is certainly possible. Although Scott describes Miss Bell as ‘an enthusiast in
literature’, the meaning of the phrase is not entirely straightforward. ‘Enthusiast’ was a slippery word at the time,
still carrying many of the predominantly negative connotations of religious enthusiasm (i.e. fanaticism)
from previous centuries. As opposed to how we would read it now, the suggestion
is one of narrowness rather than breadth in literary appreciation. Methodists
of the time were notorious for their cultural philistinism, and not without
reason. Their reading was largely prescribed for them by their ministers and
leaders from the approved list of Methodism’s own publications, consisting
predominantly of theological and devotional works. Novels were considered a
frivolous waste of time, as well as being morally dubious in terms of both
content and ideology. Of course, one cannot draw absolute conclusions about the
reading habits of any particular individual, but given the fact that constant
supervision of one’s thoughts and actions was built into the Methodist way of
life, and that, whatever other moral failings Jane Bell was accused of,
frittering away her time on selfish pleasure was never part of the indictment,
it is hard to believe that she would have had any more than the most casual
acquaintance with Scott’s works. It is more likely that he would have been the
only contemporary novelist that she would actually have heard of.
Geography
too would have been a factor. There is some uncertainty as to whether Jane Bell
was still living in North Shields at this time, or whether she had moved
further south to the vicinity of Hull, but in either case a journey (as she
initially assumed) into the Scottish borders was a less arduous undertaking
than one to the more natural literary centres of London. Not that the journey,
even as originally planned, was an easy one. The most natural route would have
been through Newcastle, but since all coaches from there into Scotland had
Edinburgh as their final destination, and that was a trip of around 16 hours,
they left in the early morning in order to be able to complete the journey in a
day. This meant that one had to travel to Newcastle on the previous day. On day
two then, at six in the morning, she would have caught the coach (The
‘Wellington’ from the Turf Hotel, Collingwood Street) with the aim of
disembarking as close to Abbotsford as possible. Abbotsford is only two miles from the town of
Melrose, but Melrose was not on the coach route. The nearest stop available
would have been Kelso, a further 11 miles away, which she would have reached at
around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, by which time darkness would already have
been falling. It is unlikely that she would have been able to find any carrier
to transport her across country in the dark, and even if she had done so,
etiquette would have precluded calling at Abbotsford in the evening. Most
probably she would have stayed in Kelso overnight, then made her way on the
morning of day three. Having been told that Sir Walter was in Edinburgh, she
would then have to have gone back to Kelso to catch that day’s four o’clock
coach, which would have landed her in Edinburgh at ten o’clock at night, again
too late to permit an immediate visit to Scott’s house. Having necessarily had
to find overnight accommodation, it would therefore have been on the fourth day
after setting out that she was finally able to meet the object of her
expedition. The degree of determination and sheer physical effort required for
such a journey in the depths of winter is not to be underestimated, and nor is
the financial outlay for travel and lodgings.
Of
course, Jane Bell’s mistaken belief that Scott would be at Abbotsford had added
a day to her travels. The fact that she believed this, however, shows that
there was no appointment made in advance. A letter beforehand asking for an
interview would almost certainly have been met with a rejection, so she was at
least realistic enough to understand this, but must have calculated that an
appeal in person would have some prospect of success. And Scott was obviously
taken with her, as well as being sympathetic towards her situation and
intrigued by her story. His journal entry continues:
... and certainly the thing is capable
of interesting situations. It throws a curious light upon the aristocratic or
rather hieratic influence exercised by the Methodist preachers within the
‘connection’, as it is called. Admirable food this would be for the
‘Quarterly’, or any other reviewers who might desire to feed fat their grudge
against these sectarians. But there are two reasons against such a publication.
First, it would do the poor sufferer no good. Secondly, it might hurt the
Methodistic connection very much, which I for one would not like to injure.
Scott
himself wrote frequently for the Quarterly Review, and what he appears to be
meditating here – before rejecting it – is the alternative possibility of
publicising her case in non-fictional form. Whether he actually outlined his
reasons against this with Jane Bell is unclear, though if he did so he would
presumably have stressed the unlikelihood of any success, rather than his
disinclination to harm Methodism itself. For Miss Bell’s grievance was
precisely with Methodism, or rather
the Methodist hierarchy, as Scott goes on to explain.
It is much to the discredit of the
Methodist clergy, that when this calumniator was actually convicted of guilt
morally worse than many men are hanged for, they only degraded him from the first
to the second class of their preachers,– leaving a man who from mere hatred at
Miss Bell's brother, who was a preacher like himself, had proceeded in such a
deep and infamous scheme to ruin the character and destroy the happiness of an
innocent person, in possession of the pulpit, and an authorised teacher of
others. If they believed him innocent they did too much – if guilty, far too
little.
Jane Bell
wished her story to be novelised, not out of vanity or as a cautionary tale,
but in order to have a weapon to use in her continuing and incomplete campaign
for the vindication of her character. She had
been vindicated by the courts: Thomas Hill – the minister in question – had
been convicted of defamation of character and ordered to pay £300 in damages. The
Methodist authorities, however, as constituted in the annual Methodist
Conference, had, by their administration of a mere slap on the wrist,
essentially dismissed that verdict and thus left Miss Bell’s reputation still
under question. She had herself left the connexion* as a result of the affair, but having been a member for more than a dozen
years, it remained the community within which she most valued her name and
self-respect. There was, however, no constitutional way within the rules of
that community by which she could now move forward. The Conference’s decision
had been made and they considered the matter closed. The only course open to
her, it must have seemed, was to apply external pressure by appealing to the
court of public opinion.
*The spelling is that used by the Methodists themselves.
This
strategy, born out of desperation though it was, may have had its merits, but
unfortunately, in her attempt to implement it, Miss Bell had chosen the wrong
man at the wrong time. Scott, as we have seen, would have been an unlikely
chronicler of her troubles at any point in his career, but she had also
unwittingly turned up at one of the darkest moments of his life. Barely a
fortnight before, he had learned that, as a result of the collapse of his
printing and publishing houses, he faced complete financial ruin. The very day
after Jane Bell’s visit, he was due to have a meeting with his creditors, one
of a series which would culminate in his signing a trust deed by which, in
exchange for not being made bankrupt, he agreed that all his future earnings
from writing should go directly to paying off the debt (which was over
£100,000). As a result of this arrangement, Scott was to write himself into
exhaustion over the next six years, dying worn-out at the age of 51. The house
at 39 North Castle Street, where the meeting with Jane Bell took place, and
where Scott had lived since 1802 would have to be sold the following month. To
add to this, Charlotte, his wife of 28 years, had fallen seriously ill and
would die that May.
Whether,
under these desperate circumstances, Jane Bell’s visit was seen as a welcome or
unwelcome distraction is impossible to know. Scott was renowned for his
manners, and would have let no hint of his own situation slip. Nevertheless,
the prospect before him, of having to write at an even more prodigious rate
than his already astounding output had required, would have made him all the
less inclined to devote time to anything outside his normal compass.
Jane
Bell’s mission, then, was a failure, but Scott seems to have let her down
gently. Too gently, in fact, since she turned up on his doorstep again on the 6th
of June the following year. The occasion, or pretext, for this second visit was
no doubt the new and expanded pamphlet she had had produced about the affair,
which she wished to present. Scott, of course, was no more likely to be moved
to action than before, and one can detect a note of impatience in his journal
entry recording this second meeting.
After noon a Miss Bell broke in upon
me, who bothered me some time since about a book of hers, explaining and
exposing the conduct of a Methodist Tartuffe, who had broken off (by anonymous
letters) a match betwixt her and an accepted admirer.
Tried in vain to make her comprehend how little the Edinburgh people would care
about her wrongs, since there was no knowledge of the parties to make the
scandal acceptable. I believe she has suffered great wrong.
The door
was irrevocably closed. Miss Bell left Edinburgh and, to all intents and
purposes, disappeared from history.
**************
The
decision to tell Jane Bell’s story, to take on a mission that Sir Walter Scott
turned down, requires some justification. After all, if the people of Edinburgh
knew and cared little about her in 1827, the wider reading public of today
certainly knows even less – in fact, she and her story are completely
forgotten. It is customary when resurrecting such minor historical events for
the writer to claim that these disregarded incidents are, in fact, of immense
significance, and will alter forever our view of the period or culture within
which they occurred. I make no such claim. Her story will never be anything but
a footnote in the history of early 19th century Methodism, itself
hardly a field of wide popular interest. Alternatively, a forgotten sequence of
events may be claimed to uncannily prefigure contemporary concerns, casting
light on what matters to us now from an unexpected angle. But here again, this
is not really the case. Such wider lessons as may be drawn from the story –
women fare badly in male-dominated societies, religious certainty can shade
into self-righteousness, power corrupts, organisations under outside pressure
close ranks and protect their own, it’s grim up North; there needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this.
So why
then? To what purpose disturbing the dust? Well, first of all, what happened to
Jane Bell is simply a good tale. It involves love, jealousy, betrayal and
political machination; it is a whodunnit, a courtroom drama, a psychological
study, and a portrait of community dynamics. It is a story both challengingly
complicated and satisfyingly complex. But beyond that is the fact that it
actually happened, long ago, in a
place and time strange to us. The current vogue for genealogy has many
wellsprings, but surely one of the strongest is the desire to have some link
with history. The idea that there can be any true personal connection with our
five times great-grandfather is essentially an illusion, but he is nevertheless
real to us in a way that his contemporaries are not. He offers a gateway into
that past world and helps us understand that it was populated by men and women
very much like ourselves. Unfortunately, detailed documentation of the lives of
ordinary people is hard to come by. That five times great-grandfather is likely
to exist only in half-a-dozen lines in the parish records. If he was a weaver,
we have to build up his life from that of contemporary weavers in general; we
do not have what we really desire – access to him as he was in himself. By the
accidental fact of its being so freakishly well-documented, Jane Bell’s story
provides what we so often seek in our ancestors and fail to find – that direct
connection to individuals in a bygone world.
One final
word here about that documentation. Enumeration of sources is generally
relegated to the modest obscurity of a book’s latter pages, and there, indeed,
more extensive details will be found. In this case, however, it is almost
impossible to understand the story itself and the choices made in telling it,
without some preliminary knowledge of the provenance of the information on
which it is based. Although there are newspaper reports and various other
records, the story would be unrecoverable and this book would not exist were it
not for the fact that, first of all, a sequence of 18 letters written by Hill
to William Sissison, Jane Bell’s quondam fiancĂ©, was read out in evidence at
the second trial, thus making the texts available in court transcripts and
elsewhere; and, even more importantly, that the parties in the dispute entered
into something of a pamphlet war in attempting to make their case before the
public and the Methodist authorities.
The main
pamphlets in question – ‘A Plain Statement of Facts’ (1823) and ‘The Cause of
Truth Defended’ (1827) on the Bell side, ‘A Statement of the Cause’ (1826) put
out by Thomas Hill – are of extended length and filled with novelistic detail.
At times they record events almost on a day-to-day basis. They are an
extraordinary resource. The problem is that they are not neutral accounts –
they are polemics, designed to demonstrate Hill’s guilt on one side, his
innocence on the other. As such, they constantly contradict each other, even on
the most basic matters of fact*.
It would be verging on the fraudulent for a writer to attempt to construct a
seamless and apparently objective narrative from these materials, without
acknowledging the sheer evidentiary difficulty of doing so. In what follows,
therefore, the weighing of evidence, probability, credibility, the likelihood
of account A as against account B – these all become crucial elements of the
story itself. What may be lost thereby in terms of narrative smoothness is, I
believe, made up for by insight gained. Why, after all, does one lie, except to
conceal? And the particular form of the lie often offers, in itself, the best
clue to what is hidden.
* Hill claimed to have found ‘one hundred and twenty three falsehoods or
mis-statements’ in the first Bell pamphlet and between two and three hundred in
the second.
Chapter
One___________________________
In the
year 1819 the town of North Shields lay along the North bank of the River Tyne
like a three-dimensional diagram of the English class system. There had been
some kind of settlement on the spot since the 13th century, but its
growth had always been restricted by both geography and the presence of its
swollen neighbour, Newcastle, 8 miles upriver. Geographically, the town was
confined to a narrow strip of land along the shore, unable to expand inland
because of the 60 foot high bank which had formed the original river border.
Economically, it was stifled because of the unwillingness of the Newcastle
authorities to tolerate a rival port in their immediate vicinity, this
unwillingness being displayed by periodic sackings in the mediaeval period and
a more civilized choking to death by commercial regulation in later eras. It
was only from the 1760s onwards that the town’s fortunes began to turn.
The
catalyst for this was the decision to build on the top of the bank, a process
that started with the construction of the imposing Dockwray Square in 1763. The
rapid subsequent growth of the upper town, coinciding, as it did, with the
golden age of British domestic architecture, resulted in an elegant and
salubrious urban landscape, much admired by visitors. Here lived the doctors,
lawyers, merchants, shipowners and their families. Their presence, and that of the upper town
itself, was a reflection of economic circumstances. North Shields grew
primarily because of a late 18th century shipbuilding boom. The many
overseas wars of the period – the Seven Years War of 1756-63, the American War
of Independence of 1776-83, and the various conflicts with France beginning in
1792 – demanded an unprecedented growth in the navy, and since ships in war
have, by definition, an uncertain life-span, constant replacement and
refurbishment were also required. In addition, the industrial revolution was
gathering speed, with a growing need for means of transporting the goods it
produced and the raw materials it required. North Shields, with its large
deep-water harbour and easy access to the North Sea, was ideally placed to take
advantage of the commercial opportunities. In its wake ship-building brought
ancillary industries, rope-makers, block-makers, sail-makers, chain makers.
And, as prosperity and the labour force grew, the commercial balance began to
tip from simply building the ships to owning and trading with them. Newcastle,
after the domination of centuries, was overtaken as the Tyne’s main trading
port, and the ships of North Shields – at some estimates more than 500 of them
– carried their cargoes, principally of coal, not just around the British
coast, but to continental Europe and beyond.
By the
beginning of the 19th century, the town was essentially two towns.
The lower was a busy working port, with all that then implied in terms of dirt,
poverty, disease, raucousness and crime. Fifty drinking houses jostled each
other within a single quarter-mile stretch of its only significant
thoroughfare, the aptly, if unoriginally, named Low Street. Meanwhile, above,
the inhabitants of the upper town – reachable from below only by steep and
perilous flights of steps – enjoyed all the benefits of late-Georgian
civilization. The streets were ‘spacious and well paved, the shops large and
tastefully displayed’. By 1819, there
was a theatre – visited that autumn by the great Edmund Kean himself, though to
a certain amount of discontented muttering over the rise in ticket prices for
the occasion; a circulating library and reading room; a newly-opened bank.
There were balls in one or more of the several elegant assembly rooms of the
George Tavern, and the Commercial Hotel provided accommodation for travellers.
Mindful of their civic responsibilities, the residents had constructed a
dispensary, ‘for the relief of the lame and sick poor’ and built, by
subscription, a free school supporting the education of 75 girls and 200 boys
through annual charitable contributions. On the outskirts of the town there was
also, for differently circumstanced unfortunates, a private lunatic asylum run
by Dr Oxley, of whom we shall hear more.
The
spiritual needs of the community were also richly catered for. Aside from the
Church of England parish church, there was a Roman Catholic Chapel, three Scots
Presbyterian churches (of different affiliations), a Baptist Chapel, two
Methodist Chapels (Wesleyan and New Connexion), a Friends’ Meeting-house and a
Synagogue.
Among the
adherents to Wesleyan Methodism in the upper town were the Bell family. In 1819
this comprised Jacob Bell, the father, and his four adult children, John, Jane,
Mary and Margaret. Jacob is always referred to as a shipbuilder, but the word, in
our contemporary usage, probably carries over-grand connotations to describe
him accurately. “Boat-builder” is the term we would be more likely to use.
Certainly, he was an employer, rather than an artisan, but everything about the
Bells’ social status and financial circumstances suggests it was on a
relatively modest scale. He was, in any case, now 67 years old and in poor
health, so would have been retired, probably for some years. In fact, we can
possibly be more accurate than that, since it was in 1815 that he set up his
son John and daughter Jane in business for themselves as wholesale and retail
dealers in china and glass on Tyne Street in the upper town, and it was also
around this time that the family moved to North Shields from South Shields, where
Jacob’s business had been based.
Of the
children, John was (at the beginning of the year) 36 years old, Jane 34, Mary
31 and Margaret 29. All, apart from Mary, lived with their father. She had
married 11 years earlier, and played no part in the events that followed –
indeed, she is scarcely mentioned in the various accounts, apart from passing
suggestions that her marriage was disapproved of, or unhappy, or both.
Margaret, too, is a shadowy figure, though she appears to have been of fragile
health, both mentally and physically. In a trade directory for North Shields in
1820, “J. & M. Bell” of Tyne Street are listed as milliners, and one
assumes, with Jane being additionally involved in the china shop, that Margaret
was the principle hat-maker, Jane perhaps handling the business side.
John,
apart from his share in the china and glass concern, also worked as a ship
surveyor, that is, one who inspected ships for seaworthiness and general
condition, either on behalf of the owners or for insurance purposes. He was
also active within the Wesleyan Methodist community as a local preacher and
class leader. Local preachers played a
vital part in Methodist organisation. A
Methodist ‘circuit’ – the administrative grouping of different congregations
within a particular geographic area – would normally be under the pastoral
charge of two or three ordained professional ministers. Within any circuit,
however, there would be many more individual congregations than that, and
Wesley and his successors had always seen it as essential that no member of the
connexion should be without the weekly succour of a formal Sabbath act of
worship. Local preachers were the answer, laymen without formal training, but
with acknowledged spiritual or inspirational gifts, who would hold the services
in the outlying communities. There were around a dozen of these men in the
North Shields community at this time, and they were organised on a rota system,
according to the circuit ‘preaching plan’, devised so that no individual should
become unduly associated with any particular congregation. Class leaders played
an equally important role, indeed could be regarded as being at the heart of
what commitment to Methodism meant. Each member of a Methodist society had to
attend a ‘class meeting’ on a weekly basis. These gatherings can be seen as a
combination of prayer meeting, Bible Class, confessional and group therapy
session. Here each individual publically examined their conscience, measured
their own conduct against the unyielding Christian standard, and received
guidance on how to walk more closely with God in the future. In such an
environment, the class leader, as director of the meeting and ultimate
authority within it, wielded enormous spiritual influence over the eight to a
dozen ordinary class members attending. Class leaders as a body, moreover,
meeting amongst themselves on a weekly basis, were effectively responsible for
the day-to-day running of the circuit, although ultimately under the
controlling aegis of the resident preachers. Holding such positions speaks
highly of John Bell’s piety and diligence – it was, after all, no sinecure to
devote what would otherwise be one’s leisure time to travelling and preaching
on a weekly basis, not to mention the additional duties class leadership entailed
– as well as the trust placed in him by the local authorities. Unfortunately,
however, this does not represent the complete picture. John had a weakness for
drink. No doubt his work as a surveyor was a contributing factor, taking him
down among the ships and temptations of the lower town, in a role where a
degree of hail-fellow-well-met camaraderie would be a valuable professional
asset. Clearly, too, on all the
evidence, he was a binge drinker, rather than a habitual soak, able to refrain
for months or even years at a time, before giving in. Nevertheless, it was
inevitable that at some point his two worlds would collide, as indeed they were
to do in the following year.
John’s
sister, Jane – who drank only water – was, as stated, 34 at the beginning of 1819.
As we have seen, Walter Scott, meeting her
a full seven years later, guessed her age at ‘around thirty’, so she
would clearly tend to be taken, by casual acquaintances, for younger, and
possibly considerably younger, than she was, a fact of some potential
significance in what was to follow. The course of her life would, in many ways,
not have been easy. Her father had gone bankrupt when she was only two years
old, and it must have taken years of financial struggle and austerity for the
family to reach a level of comparative comfort. The defining event of her life,
however, would surely have been the death of her mother Alice when she was
nine, almost certainly from complications in childbirth. Leaving aside the immediate and continuing
emotional repercussions, what this did was to completely change her role within
the family. A domestic establishment of the time required a woman as its head,
and she – however young - was the only candidate for the post. Her life would
henceforward be defined by the fact of her duty of care towards her father and
siblings and it is therefore hardly a complete surprise that she was still
unmarried in her middle thirties.
Like the
rest of her family, Jane was a Methodist, and the community appears to have
been her only source of social interaction outside the house. Literally
everyone who she is reported as having any personal contact with at all
belonged to the connexion. She seems to have been particularly good at gaining
the friendship of the Methodist ministers assigned to the area, and sustaining
that friendship after they moved away, and it was to their circuits that she
travelled on her infrequent excursions from home. So it was that in the late
summer of 1819 that she went for an extended stay in Hull, 150 miles to the
south, to visit the Reverend Abraham Farrar and his wife, who had been
stationed in South Shields from 1813 to 1815. While there, she met for the
first time a Mr William Sissison. Sissison was 30, a Wesleyan Methodist – of
course – and a currier by trade. Since this is an occupation that has virtually
ceased to exist, it will be well to quote a description and explanation from
the 1882 Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Leather as it leaves the tannery is a
comparatively rough, harsh and intractable substance, and the duty of the
currier is to dress and otherwise fit it for the use of the shoemaker,
coachbuilder, saddler and the numerous other tradesmen who work on it. The
currier has to smooth the leather, so to pare it down as to reduce inequalities
of thickness, to impregnate it with fatty matter in order to render it soft and
pliable, and to give it such a surface dressing, colour and finish as please
the eye and suit the purposes of its consumers.
It was
physically hard, dirty and smelly work, but it was also extremely skilled.
Curriers had had their own Guild since the 17th century, and
Sissison would have had to serve a seven year apprenticeship before being
allowed to set up on his own. He still, however, lived at home with his mother
and sister.
By the
time Jane returned to North Shields in October, what contemporaries referred to
as ‘an understanding’ existed between them, and Sissison wrote a letter to
Jacob Bell which merits quoting in full:
Honored and
Dear Sir,
It is not without a feeling of very
great diffidence that I take up my pen to address you on a subject in which you
must feel very deeply concerned as well as myself. I have no hesitation in
saying, that I was led by a special
interposition of Divine Providence, to form an acquaintance with your
amiable and inestimable daughter, (Miss Jane) of which you will e'er this have
been informed: an acquaintance, for which I feel I shall have cause to be
thankful, as long as I live, even if I should never have the pleasure of seeing
her again.
The impression made upon my mind of her
superiority, (not only to the generality, but, even to the higher classes of
females with whom I am acquainted,) is such, as I feel myself quite inadequate
to convey an idea of; when I look at the natural and acquired mental
possessions, and, above all, the exalted piety of Miss Bell, I feel so sunk in
my own esteem, and so very unworthy of such a person, that nothing but the most
ardent affection, combined with a conviction that I was acting under the
influence of heaven, could have prompted me to presume to solicit her hand; and
the only plea I have to offer in justification of my conduct, is, the fixed
determination I feel, in my own breast, (in humble dependence on the grace of
God) to spend my life in proving the ardency of my affection for her, and the
high sense I entertain of her incalculable worth, (providing it should please
my Heavenly Father to bestow this greatest of earthly blessings upon me, and
circumstances can be made agreeable.)
I am not quite ignorant of the difficulties that
present themselves to our connexion, and I feel acutely sensible how great a
sacrifice, you, my dear Sir, will be called to make in giving up such a
daughter, should you ever see it your duty to grant your consent to our union.
But, sir, I trust you daily experience that divine assistance is always
proportioned to the trials we are called to bear, if earnestly sought, and, in
the present instance, I feel a humble hope that the trial will be lightened, by
the satisfaction of knowing that your daughter is united to one who is devoting
his life to her happiness; I thank God, I can appeal to him, that by his grace,
this is the pure intention of my heart.
My principal view, in writing to you, sir, at
present, is, to solicit your permission to visit Miss Bell, when I shall be
happy to have an opportunity of conversing with you at large, on the various
circumstances connected with so important a step, which cannot be fully entered
upon in a letter.
In conclusion, I have only to say, that the
relationship in which you stand to the dearest object of my heart, must be my
apology for addressing you in the familiar manner which I have done, and hope
you will accept the assurance of the sincere regard of
Dear Sir,
Your's, most
respectfully,
William
Sissison.
Hull, 15th
October, 1819.
P. S. Be pleased to present my kindest love to my
dear Jane, as also my respects to the other members of your family, all of whom
I feel interested in. Mr. Farrar desired me to mention their love to yourself
and family.
A letter
such as this is peculiarly difficult to interpret almost two centuries later,
when formality tends to be read as insincerity. Taking into account, however,
that this is certainly the kind of
letter that Mr Bell would expect to receive and Sissison feel duty-bound to
write, one can try to tease out what are its individual, as opposed to its
generic, elements. Overall, it strikes what one will come to recognise as the
authentic Sissisonian note – that of a man desperate not just to do the right
thing, but to be acknowledged as
doing the right thing. The following years were to provide him with rich and
varied occasions for justifying his actions, all of which he would utilise to
explain how, in every instance, his conduct had been completely
unimpeachable. This need to be in the
right, not just in his own eyes but in those of others, was to have a profound
effect on the events to come.
More
immediately noticeable here, of course, are the pervasive appeals to God and
Providence. While neither this kind of vocabulary, nor the kind of ideological
orientation which will automatically see all events from a theological
perspective, were uncommon among Methodists at the time, it is unusual to see
them so prominent in a letter from one layman to another on an essentially
secular topic. Several alternative, though not necessarily incompatible,
explanations suggest themselves. Sissison may well have been an exceptionally
pious man. Certainly, other letters of his display some of the same
characteristics, although not with the same density. He may have regarded Jane
Bell (as he states) and therefore her family, as exceptionally pious, in which
case he is merely addressing her father as he is assumed to prefer being addressed.
But there is also the point that the romance had been somewhat of a whirlwind
one, and explaining the pair’s conjunction as ‘a special interposition of Divine Providence’ would be a
way of staving off awkward questions about undue haste.
The concentration
on Miss Bell’s virtues and attainments can be seen as both necessary flattery,
and as an adjunct to the tone of heightened religious idealism that Sissison is
clearly striving to achieve, while the derogatory references to himself, though
arguably overdone, are a familiar trope in such circumstances. It must be
remembered too, that Sissison, while perfectly capable of communicating
fluently on paper in ordinary circumstances, is a man more comfortable with a
currying knife in his hand than a pen, and the sense one has of him writing on
stilts may be nothing more than a reflection of his discomfort with an
unfamiliar style.
And
yet...and yet... It is surely not completely anachronistic to feel a slight
sense of queasiness on reading this letter. Where in it is there any sense of
Jane Bell as a personality, any sense of liking or attraction? Her virtues are
all mental or spiritual ones. There is nothing to give any feeling of
engagement with her on a human level. Sissison may twice state the ardency of
his affection, but ardour and affection are precisely what the letter lacks.
Buried
within it, also, are some disconcertingly practical concerns. The extraordinary
paragraph-long sentence beginning ‘The impression made upon my mind...’ can be
seen as merely leading up to (or descending towards) its businesslike final
clause, ‘and circumstances can be made agreeable’. And, as Sissison himself
makes clear, the actual purpose of the letter is to arrange a meeting with
Jacob Bell, a meeting at least one of whose main purposes will be the
sorting-out of the marriage contract in bald financial terms.
Financial
prudence does not preclude passion, but it is not entirely one’s knowledge that
this marriage was never to take place which leads to the conclusion that it was
not primarily, if at all, a love match. The fact is, both sides had much to
gain from the arrangement. Like almost all women of her time, Jane Bell would
have regarded the married state as her natural destiny, and opportunities for
attaining it were growing sparser as the years went by. From her father’s point
of view, whether or not he was aware of how ill he in fact was – he would be
dead within a year – the wish to have his daughter settled and protected for
the future must have weighed strongly on his mind. As for Sissison, he was
still, at 30, living in the family home with his sister and widowed mother, a
situation that he cannot fail to have found occasionally irksome. This was,
moreover, a worrying time financially. Curriers almost invariably went in for
their trade because of some sort of family connection in the leather business
generally, and in William’s case it would have been because of his father’s
profession as a shoemaker. The concern had been passed on to William’s elder
brother John a few years previously, but whether it was his cobbling or
commercial skills that were lacking, it thereafter rapidly sank, and it was
only a matter of weeks before Jane’s arrival in Hull that it had been wound up
completely. Apart from the dent to the overall Sissison family income, this
also meant that William’s own business was less secure, since a guaranteed
market for any finished leather he might produce had been removed. In this
situation, a wife, with a suitable dowry, could offer a solution to both economic
and domestic difficulties.
With a
Methodist in North Shields in need of a husband, and a Methodist in Hull in
need of a wife, the question arises whether their conjunction can have been
entirely a matter of chance. Given his acquaintanceship with both families, the
invitation to visit from the Reverend Farrar may well have been made, to put it
at its most tentative, in the knowledge that such an outcome was not outside
the bounds of possibility. This, of course, is speculation. The fact is that the
engagement took place, and was acknowledged by Jacob Bell in a letter replying
to Sissison’s:
North-Shields, October
21, 1819.
Mr.
Sissison,
Sir,
Previous to your's of the
15th inst. I was informed by my daughter Jane of your attatchment (sic) to her;
I wrote to our esteemed friend, Mr. Farrar on the subject, and received a very
satisfactory account of you; I have had many serious conversations with Jane
concerning you, and having great confidence in her judgment and conduct, am led
to think favorably of you, by her report.
As her
happiness is inseparably connected with my own, I have no wish (indeed I durst
not attempt) to control her, if she sees 'tis her providential path, as I am
firmly persuaded she will be clear in, before she takes such a step. I decline,
sir, saying what is due to my daughter, or name the loss, we, as a family,
shall sustain in parting with her. I cannot but say, you have my full
permission to visit her.
I hope
you, as well as Jane, constantly make it a subject of prayer, that you may be
led and guided by the Spirit of God into that way he would have you to go.
I am,
Dear
Sir,
Your's,
most respectfully,
Jacob Bell.
P. S. Jane desires her love to you and Mr.
and Mrs. Farrar, and my family present their respects.
While
religious preoccupation is certainly present here, the tone is notably more
sober and controlled than that of his correspondent.
So,
Sissison visited North Shields – in fact he made at least two visits over the
next few months. He would have met family and friends, attended church
services, and been introduced to the community in general as Miss Bell’s
fiancé. The marriage was due to take place in the autumn of 1820, and in
preparation for this, Jane and John formally dissolved their business
partnership in July of that year. This would have enabled Jane’s share in the
firm to be released as cash for her marriage portion.
Previous
to this, however, John Bell had run into trouble. In March 1820 his drinking
had spun temporarily out of control. To his credit, he recognised the problem,
and laid the situation before the Reverend Robert Pilter, the North Shields
Superintendent. They agreed that he should be suspended as a preacher (or
‘taken off the plan’) for a probationary period of twelve months, with his
reinstatement, subject to proof of renewed sobriety, to be decided on at the
Quarterly Meeting.*
By March 1821, however, as we shall see, circumstances within the community had
altered, and the decision on his reinstatement would be made on the basis of
other factors entirely.
*The Quarterly Meeting was the overall administrative body for the circuit,
consisting of the preachers, the circuit stewards and the leaders and stewards
from the various individual societies.
Meanwhile,
the marriage itself had had to be postponed, for tragic reasons. Jacob Bell
fell ill, or more gravely ill, we must assume some time after July, and Jane
inevitably became his nurse. She tended him, unable and unwilling to leave,
until his death in October. By this time the marriage date had passed, but any
hasty rearrangement was out of the question. Apart from the impropriety of such
a thing, Jane herself was prostrated both physically and emotionally and
required time to recuperate. It took her into the early spring of the following
year to do so, at which point the wedding was provisionally set for an as yet
unspecified date some time in late July. Jane began making her arrangements for
moving to Hull, as well as for the arrival of Sissison in North Shields for the
ceremony, and no doubt the posts were busy between the two.
It was
from around the middle of June that, out of the blue, there arose cause for
disquiet. Without explanation, Sissison ceased writing regularly, and, when he
did write, in reply to Jane Bell’s own increasingly concerned letters, it was
in guarded and evasive terms. It was only after two weeks of this, on July the
second, that there came the bombshell. Sissison wrote breaking off the
engagement.
The background to this, from
Sissison’s point of view, was as follows. On the 13th of June he had
received this anonymous letter:
Sir,
Excuse haste, brevity, obscurity.
you are engaged in an afair in this
place which will prove your ruin, except providence prevent. As a
friend, I warn you of your danger. May God help you!—you
are cruelly deceived—
Instantly break off the connexion—better
spend your days in a prison than continue it. A prudent man forseeth the
evil and hideth himself." Ask the methodist
preachers,—ask any respectable person in North or South Shields for
the truth of this letter, except Dr. O.—O my friend be advised – I could end this with a name that would
easily convince you; but I forbear—pray make further enquiry.
North Shields
June 12th, 1821.
(Addressed to)
Mr John Sission (sic), Shoemaker or Currier.
" Rev. Mr Walmsley's,
Methodist Preacher, Hull.
To be delivered immediately.
Sissison had barely, one imagines,
finished reeling from this, when, the following day, a second letter arrived, clearly from the same correspondent.
Dear Sir,
Is it you
for whom this dreadful pit is dug in Shields. O Sir, for God's sake
make enquiry before you take such a desperate step. What a
Methodist join himself to infamy and poverty! ask the methodist
preachers whether you ought to take such a step, ask any body in North
or South Shields, except Dr. O—l—y.
Fly, fly,
from danger – bury yourself in a prison rather than take a----a----a----
& a---- for better for worse
your
sincere friend.
Nh
Shields,
June
12th, 1821
Do
make enquiry
(Addressed
to) Mr. Sissison, Currier.
Rev. Mr.
Smith, Methodist Preacher, Hull.
To be
delivered immediately.
These
letters would be subject to much detailed forensic inquiry in the following
months, and we shall deal with all the conclusions drawn as they arise, but for
the moment a few basic points should be made. First of all, the writer does
not, in fact, know Sissison. He gets his Christian name wrong, misspells his
surname, is unsure of his profession, and does not know where he lives.
Secondly, he (or she) is familiar
with the names of the Methodist ministers resident in Hull. Third, Dr Oxley
(for it is he) is particularly singled out, even more explicitly in the second
letter than the first, in case there might be any mistake as to identity.
(Although even there, the writer cannot bring himself to spell the name out in
full, a stylistic – or psychological – trait we shall come across again.)
More
broadly, the most striking element is the vagueness of the charges. Sissison has been ‘deceived’. In what way? He
should not join himself to ‘infamy’. Of what sort? He should not marry ‘a----a----a---- & a---- ‘.
A what, a what, a what, and a what?
The only specific charge, in fact, is that of poverty – admittedly
something which, if true, might indeed give Sissison pause for thought, but
hardly sufficient in itself to account for the hysterical venom and desperation
displayed. What the letters are, are a baited hook, soliciting – indeed
demanding – further inquiry. The only question for Sissison was whether he
would swallow it.
In fact,
Sissison was in something of a difficult position. No doubt the proper and
correct thing to do – and, to be fair, probably his first impulse – would have
been to inform Miss Bell immediately of these slurs to her reputation, swear
undying trust, and carry on with the wedding preparations as before. The
problem was that Sissison simply did not know his fiancée particularly well. He
had spent little time in her company, knew few of her friends, and, crucially,
had no acquaintance with anyone in the communities where she had spent her
life. That she could be completely other than she had presented herself to him
was, of course, difficult to believe, but it was certainly not, in purely
practical terms, impossible. Sissison dithered. He talked to his mother. Then,
after two days, on the fifteenth, he took action. First, he sent the second
anonymous letter to the Reverend Farrar, now resident in York, asking whether
he had any idea of who the writer might be, and if it might be appropriate to
contact someone in North Shields for information. Farrar‘s reply partially* reads as follows:
My dear
Friend,—I have not the least idea to what the extraordinary letter you
forwarded, refers, nor who can be its author, but it is calculated to produce
very painful impressions; and you can neither do yourself nor Miss Bell justice, without making the
inquiries directed. By all means consult Mr. Hill [...] Dr. Oxley, I know to be
intimate at Miss B.'s, this may be the reason
why he is excepted.
I have lately been down at Newcastle, and, in passing through Shields, my wife
and I spent the night at Miss Bell's, but neither saw nor heard any thing
improper.
Your's,
very affectionately,
A. E.
Farrar.
York,
June 18, 1821.
*Only the Bells’ first pamphlet gives the text, not indicating that it is
incomplete. Sissison, however, states in his second letter to Hill that Farrar
advised him to consult ‘C. Wawn Esq., South Shields’ and this is the only
letter in which he could have done so.
As will be seen from this, Sissison did
not simply ask about the propriety of making inquiries to North Shields, he
specifically named the person he was considering writing to, although, in fact,
Farrar has it slightly wrong. Sissison’s difficulty was that he did not
actually know anyone native to North
Shields, apart from those members of Miss Bell’s inner circle – including Dr
Oxley – to whom he would have been introduced during his visits there, and
inquiry to them would hardly have solicited objective information. He did,
however, have some kind of connection to the wife of the Reverend Thomas Hill,
the lately appointed Methodist Superintendent of the area. She was originally
from Hull herself, had known Sissison’s father, and been acquainted with William
and his brother during their childhood. Writing to her on this rather flimsy
basis – there is no evidence that they had had any contact for years, if not
decades – may seem to smack of desperation, but Sissison was, at this point a
desperate man. In fact, he did not even
wait for Mr Farrar’s reply, but wrote to Mrs Hill on the same day, enclosing
copies of the anonymous letters.
DEAR CHRISTIAN FRIEND—I trust the
remembrance of my father's friendship will be a sufficient apology for my
troubling you on this occasion, which is to me of infinite importance—Rather
more than a year and a half ago, I formed an acquaintance with Miss Jane Bell,
of the China Warehouse in Tyne Street, during a visit she paid to Mr. Farrar's,
when at Hull, since which a correspondence has been kept up between us, which
had every probability of terminating in a union of the most serious character,
until the 3d Instant*,
when I received the following most extraordinary communication, dated North
Shields, 12th June 1821.(There follows a
copy of the letter beginning—"Sir, excuse brevity and obscurity")
The following day, I received another
letter, written in the same hand, likewise anonymous, of which the following is
an exact copy- (The
letter beginning—"Dear Sir, is It you for whom this dreadful pit is
dug," &c.)
Now, it so happens, that I am not
acquainted with a single individual in either of the Shields, except yourself.
I certainly have never had an opportunity of making such enquiries as ought to
be made on such occasions. I therefore throw myself on your generosity, either
to supply or procure me all the information you possibly can, that I may not
take a step in the dark, which may cause repentance for life.— The writer of
these two letters must be actuated either by a very good motive or a very bad
one, but In either case my duty is to make enquiry; for slighted warnings have
sometimes proved dreadful curses. I pledge myself, whatever Information is
communicated, the source shall not be revealed. I have only to request your
indulgence and forgiveness for this intrusion; and, praying that every blessing may
attend you and yours, for time and for eternity, I am, with the greatest
respect, yours, &c.
W.
SISSISON
He could
then, no doubt in prayerful trepidation, only sit back and await the reply,
which, when it came, was not from the wife but from the husband, the Reverend
Thomas Hill himself.
*Clearly a mistake, either by Sissison or the transcriber, for the 13th.
Chapter
Two___________________________
When
Thomas Hill arrived in North Shields in August 1820 to take up his position as
circuit superintendent, he was 45 and had been in the Methodist ministry for 12
years. His life before that appears unrecoverable – his official church
obituary states that he was born near Stourbridge, Worcestershire, and this is
confirmed by Hill’s 1851 census record giving his birthplace as Oldswinford,
the parish within which Stourbridge is situated. It is possible that he was a
relation of the Hill family of opulent industrialists based in that area,
although he says himself that ‘it was late in life before I became a student’,
so the implied lack of formal education may point to humbler origins. The
obituary states that he ‘was converted to God in early life’ and
‘for the sake of devoting himself to the work of the ministry, he cheerfully
gave up worldly prospects which were very promising.’ His marriage certificate
of 1814 has him as a widower, but we know nothing of his first marriage, the
entire course of which almost certainly predated his entry into the ministry in
1808, since the Methodist connexion would only accept the already married for
training and ordination under exceptional circumstances. The second marriage,
which took place in Dewsbury, was to Susanna Chapman, herself a widow and 4
years his junior, and, by the time they came to North Shields, they had three
children, all under 6 years old.
Hill was, in
Methodist parlance, an itinerant preacher. Itinerancy was central and peculiar
to Methodist organisation. Unlike in the Church of England, where a clergyman –
unless ambitious for promotion – might expect to remain in the same parish for
his entire working life, Methodist ministers were always moved from one circuit
to another at regular intervals. Two years in one place was standard, three the
maximum, and a single year far from unknown. In his career, Hill had already
been stationed in Bridlington, Holderness, Howden, Sunderland, Dewsbury, Bradford, Preston
and Bolton. Methodist itinerancy, in functional terms, played a role analogous
to that of celibacy in the Catholic Church. It separated the minister from the
laity and created a kind of hierarchy of holiness. Itinerancy demonstrated that
the preacher was not bound or distracted by the ties to places and people dear
to ordinary men – his loyalty was solely to God, his focus entirely on his
pastoral mission. Conducive to spiritual purity and concentration though it may
have been, however, itinerancy had its human cost. All friendships were
provisional, all roots shallow. This must have been particularly hard on the
preachers’ families, lacking their sense of vocation and without the daily
absorption of work. Women at home with their children depend on networks of
friends, but these are hard to build up and sustain when one is continually
arriving in places as a stranger and with a ticket of departure, so to speak,
already in one’s pocket.
For the preacher himself there were
other difficulties. Continually changing
location could lead to a constitutional tone-deafness to the nuances and
particularities of any individual local situation; the constant knowledge that
everyone in the community knew each other better than they knew you was a
recipe for paranoia; and the inevitable degree of isolation encouraged both
spiritual pride and self-pity. From none of these, as we shall see, was Thomas
Hill exempt.
His arrival in North Shields came in
the wake of something of a crisis in its Methodist community, reflecting a
broader crisis in the country at large. We have looked at the year 1819 purely
from individual viewpoints, but, from a broader historical perspective, it was
a year of national emergency and potential disaster. This was the year when the
growing tide of radical challenge to the constitutional status quo reached its
height with the great mass meeting calling for parliamentary reform at St
Peter’s Field, Manchester, infamously broken up by sword-wielding cavalrymen.
After Peterloo there seemed to many to be an imminent threat of violent
revolution.
With the country divided, there was no
question where the Wesleyan Methodist hierarchy stood. Methodism had never been
a radical movement politically – Wesley himself was a staunch Tory – and, as it
grew in numbers and respectability through the early years of the nineteenth
century, its conservatism became more and more entrenched. This is not entirely
surprising. The very fact of Methodism being anti-establishment in
ecclesiastical terms – particularly after the
definitive split from the Church of England in 1795 – had always left it
open to the charge that it was, by its very nature, an enemy to authority. In
an era where authority felt itself increasingly on the defensive, this was a
dangerous reputation to have, and the Methodist leadership cannot altogether be
blamed for bending over backwards to emphasise their loyalty and political
trustworthiness. Jabez Bunting, the dominant Methodist figure of the first half
of the century, has not endeared himself to posterity with his robust statement
that “Methodism hates democracy as it hates sin”, but, at the time, it was the
politically savvy line to take.
The political beliefs of the Methodist
authorities, however, were not unanimously those of the Methodist laity, as
events in North Shields itself were to prove.
On the eleventh of October 1819, less
than a month after Peterloo, a huge open-air protest meeting took place on the
Town Moor in Newcastle. By some estimates, 75,000 people attended, though the
event was peaceful and passed off without incident. Among the speakers was a
schoolteacher called William Stephenson. On the matter of Peterloo, he
lambasted the ‘cruel magistrates’ and the ‘barbarous and cruel yeomanry’,
claimed that their offences merited capital punishment, and wound up by
asserting “I would rather die with Pompey in the cause of liberty than be
enthroned with Caesar on its ruins”. Quite what the pitmen of Blyth among his
audience made of this is neither here nor there, but in any case the details of
his speech are less significant than the fact that he gave it at all, since he
was, at the time, a Methodist local preacher from the North Shields circuit.
Complaints about this were brought to
Robert Pilter, the North Shields superintendent, on the basis that so blatant
an abrogation of political neutrality was incompatible with Stephenson’s role
as a preacher. Pilter absolutely concurred, and spoke to him about the
advisability of resigning his position. Stephenson, however, did not see things
in this light, flatly refusing to
resign, but wishing to have his case debated and voted on by his peers at a
meeting of all the local preachers. He warned, moreover, that should a decision
be taken to expel him, the consequences would be dire for the local Methodist
community, since three-quarters of the members were radical reformers like
himself. Pilter had little choice but to
call the meeting; however, he also wrote immediately to Jonathan Crowther, that
year’s president of the Methodist conference, the connexion’s overall governing
body, in search of guidance. Crowther, in a surprisingly measured and
statesmanlike reply, advised moderation, suggesting that a simple admonition
would be sufficient, together with a promise from Stephenson not to indulge in
such conduct in the future. Attempts to
implement this advice, however, were fruitless, since, at the meeting,
Stephenson stood firmly on his right of freedom of speech, stating that he ‘was an Englishman and would not give up his liberty and his
conscience’, and could not therefore pledge himself not to repeat the offence.
He also made a point of repeating his warning that ‘immense mischief would
result from his expulsion’. Pilter
considered the lack of a pledge demanded that very thing, but the other preachers were concerned about
the potential damage to the circuit. A temporising compromise was arrived at –
the trial would be adjourned for a fortnight, while advice was sought from the
central Committee of Privileges, the connexion’s voice on legal matters. So,
the next day, Pilter addressed Jabez Bunting himself, the guiding light of the
committee, in a letter that positively breathes panic. In truth, Pilter was in
an almost impossible situation. On the one hand, Methodist orthodoxy and
discipline demanded Stephenson’s removal; failure to implement it would not
only give ammunition to the connexion’s conservative enemies, it would also
fatally undermine Pilter’s own authority as head of the circuit: on the other,
expulsion seemed likely to lead to a massive haemorrhaging of membership, not
to mention, from Pilter’s point of view, more direct and personal consequences.
He writes that the preachers feared expelling Stephenson could ‘ruin the circuit and subject themselves, but especially me,
to assassination’.
This may seem extreme and even ludicrous, but it
was not entirely without foundation. The keelmen of the Tyne – men who
transported coal up and down the river in small vessels – had been on strike
since the end of September and had blocked the river to trade. Only a week
before the preachers’ meeting, the Mayor of Newcastle himself had led a
flotilla of boats, with Royal Navy backup, down the river to break the blockade
by loading coal at North Shields. A
small crowd, mainly of local youths, gathered on the quayside as the work
began, booing and throwing stones at those loading the boats. The Mayor and his
accompanying dignitaries, seeing this as unlikely to hinder the operation,
landed and went to dine at the Northumberland Arms by the quay. In their absence,
however, the stone-throwing became more severe, to the point where those
affected called on the assistance of a company of marines, who fired 3 shots
into the crowd from their boat on the water. Two were blanks, designed merely
to intimidate, but the third – probably more by accident than design – was
live, and killed an innocent bystander.
This led to a full-scale riot. The marines and other boatmen having
pulled off from the renewed and increasingly deadly hail of missiles directed
at them, the mob turned its attention – with cries of ‘Manchester over again’
and ‘Blood for blood’ – to the Northumberland Arms, where it was rumoured
(wrongly) that the marine officer in charge had taken refuge. The windows and
window-frames on the two lower stories were smashed, and the doors had just
been broken in, when the arrival of the High Constable of Shields, with a
detachment of the 6th Dragoon Guards, dispersed the crowd and saved
the Mayor, arguably, from a lynching. Nor was this the end of the matter. After
a coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of Justifiable Homicide on the
unfortunate bystander, the foreman of the jury had shots fired through his
house windows, and two other jury members had their windows smashed.
In this fervid atmosphere, Pilter’s fears seem less
unreasonable. Of course, he conflates the anger of the working-class mob with
the more intellectual radicalism of the schoolteacher, but then this was
exactly the kind of alliance the establishment feared, and while clearly
Stephenson was coming to relish his position as a figurehead and potential
martyr for reform, the role of figurehead for reaction and repression could all
too easily be assigned to his persecutors.
Pilter’s fears and dilemmas – indeed the entire
community complexity of the matter – were not, however, Jabez Bunting’s primary
concern. In fact, he was already aware of the broad outlines of the situation,
having previously received a letter from Christopher Wawn, an influential lay
figure in the South Shields Methodist community and himself a member of the
Committee of Privileges, informing him of Stephenson’s prominent participation
in the Newcastle demonstration and the divisions of opinion locally as to what
action should be taken against him. Having now received confirmation and amplification
from the preacher directly in charge, Bunting must have seen the affair as offering
an ideal opportunity to put down a definitive marker in terms of Methodism’s
stance on radical dissent generally. The Committee of Privileges immediately
brought out its verdict in two resolutions –
(1)
That, under all the circumstances of
the case, and considering the peculiar character of the Political Assembly
lately held at Newcastle, this committee are of opinion, that it was highly
improper that any Member of our Body should take any part in such a meeting,
and much more so, that he should officiate as a Speaker; and that we think that
any person who has thus acted should be immediately suspended from all public
employment among us as a Local Preacher or Class Leader, and should not even be
allowed to be a Member of our Society, unless he promise to abstain from such
conduct in future.
(2)
That it is the opinion of this committee that no persons who
are enrolled as members of those dangerous Private Political Associations which
are now prevalent in the Disturbed Districts of our Country, should be allowed
to be Members of our Society, because, without adverting to the legal and
political objections against such Associations it is, on Christian grounds,
obviously improper for Members of a Religious Society to expose themselves to
such scenes of temptation and turbulence.
These resolutions were expanded and
generalised to apply across the Methodist board and published to all Methodist
circuits a few weeks later.
Such an unambiguous statement might
have been expected to make life easier for Mr Pilter, but unfortunately it did
not. Armed with it, as he was, at the reconvened preachers’ meeting, he was
unable to convince a majority of those present to take the required action.
Stephenson, while refusing to actually pledge
that he would not do so, stated that it was ‘very probable’ that he would never
attend another meeting, and this was sufficient for the preachers, swayed by
sympathy for a colleague (he had been fired from his teaching job as a
consequence of his actions) and no doubt still concerned about broader
ramifications, to vote 7 to 4 against removing him from the plan. It is more
than probable that amongst the majority would have been both John Bell and Dr
William Oxley.*
*Bell and Oxley were both local preachers at the time, and would therefore have
voted at the meetings. It is later
stated that Bell and Pilter’s ‘intercourse
was, at one time, a little interrupted, owing to a difference of opinion’, and
the Stephenson affair is overwhelmingly the most likely occasion for this to
have occurred. Dr Oxley was not only John Bell’s friend, he was also a
self-confessed radical.
One can almost hear Bunting’s sigh of irritated impatience on receiving
the news of this in another hand-wringing letter from Pilter, before rousing
himself to swat the problem aside like a fly. He returned to the Committee of
Privileges, who swiftly resolved 'that
Mr. Stephenson should be immediately suspended from the local Preachers' Plan,
and from all official duties in the Methodist Connexion and also, that unless
he unequivocally pledge himself to abstain from taking part in the public and
private meetings of what are denominated the Radical Reformers, he be forthwith
expelled from the Methodist Society'.
The word having come down to North
Shields, Stephenson was duly removed, and although he had considerably
over-estimated the number of his sympathisers, took a noticeable minority of
the local Wesleyans with him. Fourteen Independent Methodist Chapels were
established in the Newcastle area within the next year.
This could be seen as either a
disaster or a salutary cleansing, but whichever view one took, it was clear
that Robert Pilter had not emerged from the affair with any great credit. His
authority had been damaged and his ability to control the members of his
circuit thrown into question. The moving of preachers from one circuit to
another was decided upon during the annual Methodist Conference, but this had
already taken place, so Pilter, by default, was to retain his position in North
Shields for a further year. By the time of the next conference in July 1820,
however, he would have been in North Shields for the maximum permitted period
of three years, so would be due to be transferred elsewhere in any case, even
had his time in the circuit been more of a success than it proved. His
successor, whoever it might be, would clearly have a difficult inheritance, so
making the correct choice became a matter of some importance. Pilter had his
own ideas on the subject. Writing again to Bunting in July 1820 he stated his
preference for David M’Nicoll, with Thomas Moss as his assistant. Moss, who was
indeed appointed, was young and inexperienced, but, as events would prove, a
reliable and pugnacious yes-man for any actions of his superiors. M’Nicoll is a
more interesting and substantial figure. He was an urbane, benign and bookish
man, unconcerned with politics, which suggests that Pilter felt the circuit
required a time of respite from confrontation. On the other hand, he was also a
close friend of Thomas Allan, Bunting’s right-hand man at Methodist
headquarters, and was seen as something of a rising star in the movement, so
Pilter may simply have been ingratiating himself with Bunting, while at the
same time hoping to achieve something of a coup for his circuit by the
appointment. In the event, M’Nicoll gained a higher position, that of Chairman
of the entire Newcastle district, which included North Shields among the
circuits it directed,* though his congenital dislike for administration made his time there not
altogether a comfortable one.
*The Newcastle District consisted of the circuits of Newcastle, Gateshead, North
Shields, Sunderland, Durham, Wolsingham, Hexham, Alston, Alnwick and Berwick.
The process by which any particular
preacher was assigned to any particular circuit had always been shrouded in a
certain amount of mystery. Circuits could petition, as Pilter did; preachers
could request; but the ultimate decision was made by the Stationing Committee,
which sat annually and included a representative of each Methodist district, as
well as the President and Secretary of the previous year’s conference. Like
many other Methodist institutions of the time, this was widely and correctly
assumed to be under the control of Jabez Bunting, who in 1820 was the Secretary
in question, as he had been for several years previously. Bunting would hardly
have had the desire or information to micromanage all preaching appointments, but it is impossible to believe, given
his close involvement with the events of the previous year, that he would have
failed to afford the question of who to appoint to North Shields his particular
attention. That the choice fell on Thomas Hill was, therefore, far from
accidental. Notice, specifically, would have been taken of his performance in his
two previous postings at Preston and Bolton.
In Preston in 1816, Hill and his
deputy William Arnott had presided over a significant religious revival which
bolstered local Wesleyan Methodist membership by almost a third in a matter of
months, necessitating the building of a new larger chapel which opened the
following year. This spurt in Methodist enthusiasm sufficiently alarmed some
local Anglicans for them to have reprinted and widely distributed an
anti-Methodist pamphlet entitled ‘A Caveat Against Unsound Doctrines’ by the
Reverend Augustus Toplady. Toplady, who is mainly remembered today, if at all,
for his authorship of the hymn ‘Rock of Ages’, was more widely known in his
lifetime and for many years subsequently as a theologian and religious controversialist.
In particular, he was a fervent proponent of Calvinism, both as a doctrine in
its own right, and as the essential basic tenet of Anglican theology. As such,
he was bitterly opposed to the Arminianism of John Wesley and his followers,
whom he attacked constantly in print. What is interesting is that the pamphlet
in question – the text of one of his sermons – had originally been published in
1770, with Toplady himself dying in 1778. That the Preston Anglicans should
have chosen such a venerable weapon against resurgent Methodism says much about
the continuing cachet of Toplady’s reputation, and perhaps a little about the
lack of contemporary polemical expertise available locally. In any case, what
matters for our purposes is that the publication provoked Thomas Hill’s first
recorded venture into print. “A Brief Vindication of Evangelical Arminianism in
reply to A Caveat Against Unsound Doctrines […]” is not the kind of work that
intrinsically recommends itself to today’s tastes, but as a defence of Wesleyan
doctrine it is efficiently written, clearly argued, and displays an impressive
familiarity with both Biblical texts and the theological issues involved.
Overall, then, his time in Preston
would have marked Hill as a man to watch. Not only had he displayed exemplary
evangelical energy in boosting membership, he had also himself entered the
public arena against Methodism’s opponents, demonstrating not only his
combativeness in support of the connexion, but also an impeccable doctrinal
orthodoxy combined with substantial scriptural erudition. What would have made
him more particularly stand out as a candidate for the North Shields
appointment, however, were the events in Bolton in that year of events, 1819.
Political agitation does not arise
in a vacuum. The radical movements of the age were, to a substantial extent,
the product of the extended period of economic depression which followed the
end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Rising prices and falling wages led to
understandable dissatisfaction with the political system which produced them, a
system which denied those most affected any say in its operation. The Wesleyan
Methodist Connexion had a difficult line to tread in this situation,
maintaining sympathy with the genuine suffering of many of its members, while
distancing itself forcefully from their political aspirations. This task was
made harder by the economic impact of the downturn on the organisation itself.
Lacking the entrenched wealth of the established church, Methodism had always
had to be self-supporting, dependent on contributions from its members. To be a
member of the connexion, one had, as we have seen, to attend a class meeting on
a weekly basis. Attendance was rewarded with a class ticket, essentially a
membership card for the connexion. But, as well as making time to be present,
one also had to make a financial contribution. At this period it was set at one
penny (at least) per week, plus an additional shilling (at least) per quarter.
The monies thus collected would go to support the preachers’ salaries, the
interest on loans for chapel buildings, and administration generally. Besides
such mandatory payments there were also regular, if unscheduled, extra
collections made according to what was deemed necessary to maintain the work of
the circuit at any particular juncture. In times of economic stringency,
however, even small sums could be beyond some members’ reach. This created
several difficulties. By the letter of the law, anyone who did not pay could
not be a member. But denying someone spiritual sustenance simply on grounds of
poverty was not exactly what Jesus (or Wesley) had had in mind. On the other
hand, Methodism had to be financially sustained. There was also the point that,
simplistic as the analysis might have been, the appearance of the thing was that the preachers, all middle-class
men in comfortable circumstances, were scraping money out of the hands of the
poor in order to line their own pockets. William Stephenson, in North Shields,
still seething at his expulsion, made his view clear:
“The
people are groaning under the pecuniary burdens which are imposed upon them
from time to time. One collection follows another in rapid succession, and they
never know where the misery will end. There are more than seventy collections
every year, either public or private - was this always the case? We answer, it
was not; a time was, when Methodist preachers had little more than fifty pounds
per annum; their wants then were few, they laboured for souls, and success in
their labours was to them a sufficient recompense. Superfine coats, water-proof
hats, silk stockings and gold watches were never the object of their pursuits -
Surely, Sir this cannot be said for the present race of Methodist Preachers.”
One can see from this how easily
such an issue could be assimilated to the radical agenda of poverty against
privilege. Nevertheless, it is clear from the frequency of the somewhat
plaintive resolutions passed and promulgated by the Conference, requiring the
rules to be rigidly applied, that many preachers must simply have played things
by ear, turning a blind eye to infractions where there was nothing to be gained
by not doing so. This, however, was not Thomas Hill’s way.
The economic recession was
particularly severe in the cotton industry, and Bolton, a mill town, suffered
accordingly. Despite the straitened circumstances of many members of his
congregation, however, Hill, then superintendent of the circuit, insisted on a
rigid application of the rules. Those who defaulted on their payments were
ruthlessly struck off the class lists. Moreover, he harangued the congregation
continually on the spiritual evils of non-payment and the Christian necessity
of ‘supporting the ministry’. Many among
the community had radical sympathies, but such views he treated with scorn and
preached against them on a regular basis. This ‘bringing of politics into the
pulpit’ was much resented, and events came to a head at a class leaders’
meeting early in 1819. Some members were accustomed to indicating their radical
sympathies by wearing white felt hats in imitation of the radical leader Henry
Hunt. Several of these were placed on a table prior to the start of the
meeting, and Hill knocked them to the floor with a sweep of his arm. This
direct display of contempt appears to have marked the point of no return, with
ten senior members leaving the connexion shortly afterwards to form their own
independent church.
The parallels between these events
and those in North Shields later in the year are obvious. In both cases, a
secession took place, ostensibly on the issue of radicalism. The real issue,
however, was that of authority. What were the limits that the Methodist church
felt entitled to impose on its members’ beliefs and behaviour, and how were
these limits to be enforced? Pilter, though disapproving of Stephenson’s
actions, was willing to go to some lengths to retain him and those like him
within the community. Hill, on the other hand, appears to have regarded
radicals as simply bad apples whom the connexion would be better off without, a
view that Bunting undoubtedly shared. Pilter’s strategy of appeasement –
admittedly somewhat forced upon him – would, without central intervention, have
left the North Shields radicals in place. Hill’s proactive confrontations had
forced the Bolton radicals out. In appointing Hill to North Shields, therefore,
Bunting was both addressing a perceived problem and making a clear statement.
Here was a circuit where lingering disaffection was still likely to exist, and
further trouble to be looked for. Should it arise, it would be dealt with
rigorously.
Hill would
have been well aware of his assigned role as enforcer, and must have taken up
his appointment in the expectation of opposition. After all, had Stephenson not
said that three-quarters of the circuit’s members shared his opinions? Since nothing like that number had left
with him, the obvious assumption was that many had stayed to continue spreading
their poison from within. Certainly, at least some of the local preachers who
had actually voted for his retention, against the wishes of Conference and the
local superintendent, were still in place. It is inconceivable that Hill should
not have been informed that John Bell and Dr Oxley, among others, were not
entirely to be trusted to follow the party line.
The historical irony of this is
that, by August 1820, when Thomas Hill arrived in North Shields prepared to
smite rampant radicalism hip and thigh, the radical moment had, in fact,
passed. Peterloo and its immediate aftermath would prove to have been the high-water
mark of mass popular discontent. Draconian government laws against assembly and
organisation were sufficient to suffocate radical reform movements for a
generation. That we now know this to be the case, however, does not mean that
this is how it was perceived at the time, particularly not so soon after the
traumatic events of 1819. Certainly, radicalism had become less overt, but did
this not simply mean that its forces were organising clandestinely, in
preparation for a yet mightier assault? Clandestine organisation is, by
definition, not easily discernible, so those believing in its extensive
existence are always in danger of seeing a hidden hand in events susceptible to
simpler explanation. Even in 1819, opposition to Hill in Bolton had been as much
to do with his inflexible and insensitive attitude to monetary contributions as
with broader political differences, but Hill would always believe his opponents
to be politically motivated, and, in consequence, that his own actions
justified themselves by the magnitude of threat he was confronting.
It was not long after his arrival in
North Shields that issues began to arise. The first was what was to be rather
over-grandly described as the Oxley controversy. William Oxley was a prominent,
perhaps over-prominent, member of the Methodist community, a class leader and
local preacher. He was born, apparently illegitimately, in Allerthorpe in the
east Riding of Yorkshire in 1779, and had been resident in the Shields area for
around 20 years. At this point in his career and subsequently he is universally
referred to as Dr Oxley, but there
has to be some doubt as to whether he actually possessed what we would now
recognise as formal medical qualifications. He is Mr Oxley in ‘The First Report of the Methodist Missionary Society
for the Newcastle-upon-Tyne District’ in 1815 (where he is named as treasurer
of the North Shields Circuit Society), and, more tellingly, in various
newspaper advertisements of the same year, also titling him Mr, he is stated to
be a surgeon and chemist. Later in his career, when he was running a private
lunatic asylum in London, he is again referred to in official records as
‘William Oxley, surgeon’. Surgeons traditionally trained by serving an
apprenticeship, rather than through a set course of study, but even this,
particularly in the provinces, was not always a formal arrangement but could be
a matter of simply picking up the knowledge required over time in a conducive
environment. This may well have applied to Oxley, since a properly licensed
apprenticeship was an expensive business, and one has to assume that, as an
illegitimate child, he was unlikely to have grown up in affluent circumstances.
The fact that, in present day terms,
Oxley was probably neither properly a doctor nor a surgeon is by no means to suggest that he was a quack or
charlatan. Rigid codification of medical qualifications did not exist at the
time, and it was perfectly legitimate for anyone to simply hang up his sign and
commence to practice; the proof was in the pudding and Oxley was to sustain a
medical career of more than 50 years without any querying of his abilities or
credentials. In this he was no doubt
aided by the nature of his two particular specialisations, midwifery and the
care of the insane, the first being generally the province of the self-taught
in any case, and the latter an area for which no definitive clinical templates
existed. Nor would his lack of qualified training necessarily have handicapped
either himself or his patients in the field of general practice, in an era when
even the most advanced medical science remained very much a matter of hit and
miss.
What is certainly true is that he
was financially successful. Apart from his private asylum in Tynemouth and his
personal residence in the same area – he had been married since 1805 and had at
least three living children – he also owned property in North Shields itself,
among his tenants being the Bell family. Looking at his career as a whole, what
is perhaps most obvious is his sheer busyness and desire to be involved to the
hilt in any organisation with which he was connected. (His particular
enthusiasm was for teetotalism,
of which he was an early pioneer, and by the end of his long life he had
associated himself, generally at executive level, with virtually every major
temperance organisation in the country.) As far as the North Shields Methodists
were concerned there is at least a hint that this activist instinct could be
found intrusive. Reversing the usual dictum regarding history, the high
seriousness of the William Stephenson affair had been rehearsed as farce five
years previously, when James Douglas, a bankrupted shoemaker, who had switched
allegiance from the North Shields Wesleyans to the New Connection, published a
pamphlet entitled “Methodism Condemned” a swingeing attack on Wesleyan
Methodism and all its works, with particular reference to the conduct of the
North Shields circuit. In it ‘Mr O---y’ is painted as the resident preachers’
fixer and general go-to man for any of the abundant dirty work they undertake.
Douglas’s critique is, admittedly, hyperbolic to the point of derangement, but
it fits the general picture of Oxley’s vigorous and assertive character to see
him as someone able to establish himself as a vital cog in the wheel of the
circuit’s management and a trusted lay lieutenant to the official hierarchy. It
is equally easy to see why this kind of cosy relationship might have been
brought to a halt with Thomas Hill’s arrival in the district. Hill would have
seen the North Shields circuit as essentially dysfunctional due to appeasement
of radical fifth-columnists in the community’s ranks by the previous regime. He
would therefore have wanted to distance himself from all aspects of that regime
as rapidly and definitively as possible. Oxley was not only deeply implicated
by the general extent of his past influence, he had also probably been one of
the men to vote for Stephenson’s retention in direct and rebellious
contradiction to the stated wishes of central command. He was, moreover,
himself a confessed radical. His necessary banishment from any access to the
levers of local power was therefore a tactical and political necessity. Beyond this, it is likely that the two men
simply rubbed each other the wrong way. Hill, narrow, saturnine, doctrinaire
and driven, would always have been liable to find someone like Oxley, an
outgoing, sanguine, self-confident man of the world, particularly irksome.
The particular trigger for open conflict was the fact that Oxley, a class leader, had become in
the habit of absenting himself from the weekly administrative leaders’
meetings. As a doctor, he was, of course, on call, and occasional emergency
disruptions of his schedule were only to be expected. His absenteeism, however,
was something of a regular occurrence, to the point of clearly being against
both the rules and spirit of his position. Whatever the reason for this
behaviour might have been – Oxley may have been taking advantage of his
privileged position in the community in this way for years and not realised the
wind had changed; alternatively, it may have been a display of pique at his
marginalisation by the new regime – it was not the kind of thing that Hill, a
known stickler for regulations, was likely to let pass. Nor, to be fair, was
his attitude unreasonable. It is hard not to read a degree of arrogance into
Oxley’s conduct, a belief that rules were only to be obeyed by lesser men than
he. And significantly, on this occasion, Hill was not without support. Even
William Little, one of the circuit stewards, who was subsequently to be amongst
the most vociferous of Hill’s opponents, agreed with him on the justice of
calling Oxley to account. He also stated that ‘there had been ... differences
of opinion in the society on the subject of Dr Oxley.’ So it is worth
remembering, when we read Hill’s later attacks on the doctor, that he was not
universally admired, and Hill’s opinion of him cannot entirely be dismissed as
grounded in personal animus. Since Oxley remained a leader we can assume some
concession was made on his part, it being impossible to imagine Hill not taking
things further if the rules had continued to be flouted. The incident, however,
can only have confirmed his predisposition to think of Oxley as someone
inveterately liable to oppose ministerial authority.*
*This did not prevent him retaining Oxley as his family physician, but then he
appears to have been the most prominent, if not the only, Wesleyan doctor in
the town.
But the Oxley business was only a
storm in a tea-cup compared to the dispute that arose around the same time, one
which brought Hill into conflict with the leading members of the Methodist
community in Blyth, a mining town about 8 miles to the north. The matter at
issue was the status of the Methodist Chapel there. Such questions had, in
fact, bedevilled Methodism generally, since the days of Wesley. Methodists
needed places to worship in, but, unlike the Church of England, they had no
architectural heritage ready-made. Chapels needed to be built, and in order to
be built, required paying for. Methodism, as an organisation, had no such
funds, so responsibility devolved down to the local level. Money would be
raised in the local community, often predominantly from a few wealthier
members. Once the building existed, however, a further problem arose, that of
ownership. Legally, this was vested in named members of the community, but
Wesley and his successors found this unsatisfactory. What, after all, was to
stop these men, or their inheritors, from using the building for their own
ends? What if they strayed from the true Wesleyan path? The place, after all,
had been built specifically for Methodist purposes – a handful of unrepresentative
individuals should surely not have the potential power to pervert this. The
answer arrived at was to put the future of the building into the hands of
trustees. They would be bound by a trust deed, defining precisely what was and
was not allowed to happen to it and within it, in perpetuity. A model deed, for use in all such
circumstances, was drawn up by the Methodist Conference. It specified, amongst
other things, that no activities were to take place in a chapel, other than
those mandated by the rules of the Connexion.
The chapel in Blyth had trustees and
a trust deed, but unfortunately it was not the right one. Crucially, it failed
to define precisely what activities were and were not permitted within the
building. Since the chapel was of relatively recent construction, one suspects
that the deed was tailored in this way to the wishes of the local community.
What went on in the chapel was, of course, innocence and piety personified, but
it does appear to have hosted local events other than purely religious
services. More to the point, as it turned out, collections at these events were
not passed up the line for distribution by the circuit headquarters in North
Shields, but disbursed locally.
Thomas Hill’s original impulse for
interfering in these arrangements may have been relatively benign. The trust
deed situation was an anomaly, and
one clearly counter to established Methodist policy. One could go as far as to
say that he was doing nothing more than his duty in drawing the matter to Blyth’s
attention and wishing for the deed to be revised along more appropriate lines.
On the other hand, he appears to have initiated the business within a very
short time after his arrival in the district, so the suspicion exists that he
was looking for an opportunity to set down a marker in terms of ministerial
authority. Diplomacy was, in any case, never Hill’s strong suit, and it seems
clear that he put his proposals as a demand rather than a request.
Constitutionally, he was no doubt on impeccably firm ground, but unfortunately
perceptions worked against him. The fact was that the consequences of the
change would benefit no-one more directly than Hill himself. The circuit
hierarchy being what it was, he would now have the final and definitive say
over what was permitted within the chapel. Not only that, but the monies
collected in Blyth would now go to him rather than the local community, and the
first call on collections within any circuit was always towards the payment of
the minister’s salary. It also seems likely that extra collections were set to
be imposed in order to pay for the actual legal business entailed in the
setting-up of the new deed. Given all this, it can easily be understood how the
Blyth leaders saw Hill’s actions as an attempt to crush them with his
authority, while diverting funds destined for local charitable purposes into
his own pocket. They reacted with concerted and determined opposition. From Hill’s point of view, it is equally
clear that he would perceive such opposition as open rebellion, and a
disinclination to hand over collections as financial blackmail.
It is unclear how the matter was
finally resolved, whether Hill got his way through imposition of his authority,
leading to seething resentment, or whether the men of Blyth, in completely
legal possession after all, simply refused to budge. The issue was, in any
case, to rumble on throughout Hill’s tenure in North Shields, peaking
occasionally in bouts of accusation and counter accusation, threat and
counter-threat, settling finally into a sullen truce in the months before his
departure, with the Blyth leaders barring Hill from the chapel in question, and
Hill, for once, allowing sleeping dogs to lie.
For him, the affair can only have confirmed his preconceptions about
those under his pastoral care. North Shields did indeed contain enemies within,
and a minister’s authority could not be taken for granted, but must be actively
employed.
It was in January 1821, by which
time battle lines had already been drawn between Hill and the Blyth community,
that John Bell became involved. Up
until this point the relationship between Hill and the Bell family had been
cordial and even friendly. He and Moss called at their home frequently, and on
Jacob Bell’s death Hill asked Jane to draw up an account of her father’s last
illness and pious passing for him to use in the funeral sermon.*
Both preachers visited at Christmas with their wives. In particular, Hill often stated his hope that John would be
restored as a preacher after his probationary period was over. This all changed
as a result of the Blyth affair.
*Accounts of ‘happy deaths’ were a Methodist tradition, and occur in virtually
every biography or obituary.
The Bell family had past connections
with the Blyth area – in fact, both John and Jane had been baptised in the
parish of Earsden within which Blyth was situated – so it is reasonable to
assume that they may still have had relatives there, or, at the least, old
family friends. In any case, the Blyth leaders in dispute with Hill were in the
habit of visiting John Bell when they were in North Shields. That January, John
happened to be at Thomas Moss’s house when Hill called in after one of his
trips to Blyth. Hill expressed himself vehemently on the rascality of his
opponents there, to which John replied that he was sorry to hear him talk in
such terms, since he himself particularly respected the members of the Blyth
society. Hill is reported to have been extremely displeased at this, and to
have regarded John with suspicion, if not enmity, from then on. He remarked to
several people subsequently, on the basis of their visits to John’s house, that
he believed the Blyth leaders had their
‘attorney general’ in Shields.*
*Hill was later to deny that he knew of any connection between John Bell and
Blyth until after the sending of the
anonymous letters, but it is difficult to take this claim seriously. Even apart
from the extensive third-party evidence, the only motive the Bells could ever come up with to explain Hill’s
animosity towards them, and his subsequent behaviour, was precisely the rift
between John and Hill over the Blyth affair, and it is impossible to believe
they would build their entire case on a factual error.
In March, John Bell’s year of
suspension came to an end, and his reinstatement as a preacher was duly
proposed at the Quarterly Meeting. All the evidence suggests that he had
managed to sustain sobriety over the period, but nevertheless Hill, who was
president of the meeting, objected strongly to having him back on the plan,
stating that he
was highly offended at Bell’s having taken "a decided part against him on
the subject of difference at Blyth," a matter in which, he said, his own
continuing in the ministry was involved. After
some debate, his view was accepted, and Bell’s reinstatement did not take
place.
Amongst the expected duties of
Methodist women was the collection of money from members in their immediate
neighbourhoods in order to support the activities of Methodist missionary
societies abroad. Jane Bell was delivering her proceeds from this at the Hills’
house a few weeks later when she raised the question of the change in Hill’s
behaviour towards her brother. Hill replied: "It is not the getting drunk,
Ma'am; but I believe he is one who will oppose superintendents and pinch them
of their pence".
Despite this, it was not long
afterwards that John received a letter from Hill couched in unexpectedly
friendly terms. After what had gone before it was difficult for him to take
this at face value, and, given what we know about Hill’s opinion of him as
stated in letters only a couple of months later, we are surely entitled to
share that scepticism. What appears to have been the case is that the Blyth
leaders had reached such a level of disaffection around this time, that they
announced their intention of writing a letter to Conference outlining their
grievances and asking for Hill’s removal from North Shields, if not dismissal
from the ministry itself. This kind of appeal by lay members over the heads of
the local authorities was exceptionally unlikely, of course, to cut any ice
with a Bunting-dominated Conference, and, in the event, the letter was never
sent, but the threat of it seems to have put Hill into a state of some panic.
His communication to John Bell can therefore best be seen as, on the one hand,
an attempt at a divide and conquer strategy with regard to his perceived
opponents, and, on the other, as future evidence, if required, of his good
will, emollience and willingness to compromise.
In any event, the olive branch – if
such it was – was rejected, and relations between Hill and the Bells were still
distant by the time of the anonymous letters in mid-June. Meanwhile, events at
Blyth had reached crisis point. With the threat to report Hill to the Methodist
Conference in August still on the table, the Blyth faction increased the
pressure by announcing their intention of opening a new front at local level by
calling him to account at the imminent quarterly meeting. It was in the very
week between the sending of the anonymous letters and Hill receiving Sissison’s
plea for information, that Hill wrote in response to Mr Heppel, the Blyth
ringleader, in part as follows:*
...and infamy to ruin your poor minister
& his family – Is it generous, will it sweeten the cup of life which a wise
and inscrutable providence is mixing for you? will it gild the evening of your
days with one cheering recollection, or add one gem to the crown which you hope
to wear ah! no – Then stop, for Christs sake stop, -- However if you & your
friends are determined to proceed in this bad work & to come forward &
impeach me at our quarterly Meeting
be sure and count the cost – Remember
I shall have to defend myself, – and, mean & incompetent as
you think me, I can do it,
Be advised then in time and take
your paper, & you & your friends go on in the name of the Lord – It
is probable you may have done with me whom you think such a nuisance, much
sooner than you anticipate – At all events none of you will ever have a wrong
word from me any more, except you compel me to defend my wife & children,
my life & what is still dearer my character
Yours affectly Tho Hill
‘A prudent man foreseeth the evil &
hideth himself’ Solomon’
*The full text of this letter has not survived, but both Hill and the Bells
included a facsimile of its final page in their pamphlets, in order to provide
an example of Hill’s handwriting to compare with the anonymous letters.
This
extraordinary outpouring, with its mixture of pleading, bravado and self-pity –
calling to mind Max Beerbohm’s image of a man crawling on his knees while
shaking his fist – certainly shows someone under stress, feeling himself
persecuted by his enemies, and determined to fight back. It was in this state
of mind that he was to reply to Sissison’s letter.
.