Yorkshire Almanac John Wesley rides into Huddersfield in the Wild West Riding

9 May 1757: John Wesley rides into Huddersfield in the Wild West Riding

John Wesley. 1827. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 2. London: J. Kershaw. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

I rode over the mountains to Huddersfield. A wilder people I never saw in England: the men, women, and children, filled the street as we rode along, and appeared just ready to devour us. They were however tolerably quiet while I preached; only a few pieces of dirt were thrown; and the bell-man came in the middle of the sermon, but was stopped by a gentleman of the town. I had almost done, when they began to ring the bells; so that it did us small disservice. How intolerable a thing is the Gospel of Christ to them who are resolved to serve the Devil!

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Two years later, on 23 July 1759,

I preached near Huddersfield, to the wildest congregation I have seen in Yorkshire: yet they were restrained by an unseen hand, and I believe some felt the sharpness of His word. I preached at Halifax in the evening, but the preaching-house was like an oven.

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Comment

Two years later, on 23 July 1759,

I preached near Huddersfield, to the wildest congregation I have seen in Yorkshire: yet they were restrained by an unseen hand, and I believe some felt the sharpness of His word. I preached at Halifax in the evening, but the preaching-house was like an oven.

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28 April 1747: John Wesley visits “the new house of the Germans” (the Moravians) at Pudsey, which is financed by overseas donations

15 August 1781: The ineffably peripatetic John Wesley discovers a movable pulpit in Sheffield

12 December 1641: John Sugden causes panic in Bradford and Pudsey with news of the imminent advent of genocidal Irish Catholics

18 July 1784: Wesley finds children “restrained from open sin” at one of the first Sunday schools, at Bingley

18 June 1664: Jane Thompson of Craven, “a swinish drunkard,” dies of a barely-treated compound fracture

17 May 1828: Joseph Pickles of Wilsden, a Methodist convert, dies, having partially recovered his sight, and helped produce 410 descendants

27 May 1776: Samuel Hick, apprentice blacksmith, overcomes his pacifist leanings to rescue the Wesleyan Richard Burdsall from an Anglican assailant at York

24 July 1761: Jonas Rushford (14) of Bradford tells a perhaps envious John Wesley how the Skipton magician Timothy Crowther helped him find a missing man

6 May 1744: John Nelson, one of the first Methodist preachers, finds the welcome from gaoler James Barber at Leeds Gaol superior to the accommodation

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Comment

James Wardell gives the date and the name of the gaoler, the latter apparently on the authority of Nelson, though I can’t find it; no idea where he got the date, but 6 May 1744 was a Sunday:

The old prison of the Borough, (originally situate in that part of Briggate, lately called “Cross Parish,”) was removed to the south side of Kirkgate in 1655; it was a most wretched place, and contained five or six dark and miserable apartments, without even a sewer or a fire place, in addition to which, the windows thereof were not even glazed. It was remarked by the philanthropic Howard in reference to this building, that an hour was too long to remain in such a place. Yet it was here, that John Nelson, one of the first Methodist preachers, was confined on the 6th May, 1744, when passing through the town, after having been illegally impressed for a soldier: the name of the gaoler, who, (according to Nelson’s Journal,) kindly permitted above one hundred of his friends to visit him the same night in the gaol, was “James Barber,” late “an Innholder in this Burrough.” Opposite the prison was the common bakehouse which had existed from an early period, but the privileges with which it was invested, have, together with the building, long ago ceased to exist (Wardell 1846).

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