Yorkshire Almanac Amid Nonconformist protests at a new church rate, payable by all Leeds to build temples for the Church of England, a Farnley man says organs are a waste of money

26 July 1827: Amid Nonconformist protests at a new church rate, payable by all Leeds to build temples for the Church of England, a Farnley man says organs are a waste of money

Leeds Mercury. 1827/07/28. New Church Tax. Leeds. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

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

A person from the body of the meeting [held in the parish church, chaired by the Rev. Fawcett, and attended by 4,000], whom we understood to be from Farnley, objected to the grant, on the ground that the objects for which it was required were unnecessary and expensive. He observed, that church furniture was very dear, and could it be supposed that an organ was a necessary thing? Did they ever know, or ever hear tell of an organ converting a sinner from the errors of his ways, and from the power of sin and Satan unto God? If an organ was taken to a dying man, and he was asked what he thought of it, he would reply, it is but as sounding brass, or as a tinkling cymbal.

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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

This is a downdraught of the storm that split the Leeds Methodists in autumn 1827 regarding the installation of an organ in the Brunswick Chapel.

If we are to believe the Mercury (prop. and ed. Edward Baines), the meat of the meeting was the speech against the rate – against any rate – by Edward Baines:

I oppose assessments on principle, because I think their influence is to injure the cause of religion, to damp the zeal of its ministers, and to make that a sinecure which ought to be the post of exertion and energy.

Etc. etc.

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Comment

This is a downdraught of the storm that split the Leeds Methodists in autumn 1827 regarding the installation of an organ in the Brunswick Chapel.

If we are to believe the Mercury (prop. and ed. Edward Baines), the meat of the meeting was the speech against the rate – against any rate – by Edward Baines:

I oppose assessments on principle, because I think their influence is to injure the cause of religion, to damp the zeal of its ministers, and to make that a sinecure which ought to be the post of exertion and energy.

Etc. etc.

Something to say? Get in touch

20 September 1819: Flags and fasces at a procession from Briggate to Hunslet Moor to protest the Peterloo Massacre

3 September 1810: Mr Jackson, Dewsbury druggist, gets drunk while visiting a prisoner at Rothwell

6 September 1823: A list of tithes included in, and excluded from, future Tory MP Richard Fountayne Wilson’s offer to pay the vicar of Leeds half the cost of their abolition

11 July 1829: A Leeds Mercury subscriber asks why Christians do not seek to refute the claims of the Rev. Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile’s “infidel home missionary tour”

15 October 1838: Apologies from “imprisoned” Huddersfield workers are read to the great Chartist rally on Peep Green (Hartshead Moor), accusing middle-class radicals of betrayal

22 November 1839: Bradford rejects its new vicar William Scoresby’s proposal for a church rate by a huge majority, inspiring a curious letter

29 June 1876: Uplifted, Harrogate parish church awaits the monstrous £1,800 Schulze organ from Thomas Stuart Kennedy’s Meanwood Towers, Leeds

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

27 August 1754: The (Tory) Leeds Intelligencer calls on Holbeckers to accept the appointment by Samuel Kirshaw, Vicar of Leeds, of a new curate, Richard Fawcett Snr, to St Catherine’s Chapel

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Comment

Via Roy Wiles (Wiles 1965).

Events

“Sunday last” is 25 August, but Fawcett managed to get in by 11 September:

On Wednesday last Mr. Fawcett for the first time performed Divine Service in the chapel of Holbeck, but was escorted to and from the chapel by a party of Dragoons, who kept guard at the doors during the service. Notwithstanding this precaution, some evil-disposed people found means to break the windows and throw a brickbat at Mr. Fawcett while he was in the reading- desk. The Sunday following he went through the service unmolested. And on Sunday last he preached a most excellent sermon, 46th verse of 13th chapter of Acts… The same night some prophane sacrilegious villains broke into the chapel and besmeared the seats with human excrements.

On 22 September he was able to conduct a reduced Sunday service in peace:

On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Fawcett was received and behav’d to by his congregation at Holbeck with great decency… One of Mr. F.’s friends admitted their favourite preacher to his pulpit in the town-by this means the tumultuous part of the people were mostly drawn away from Holbeck, and the curate left at liberty to perform his duty amongst the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of the chapelry.

However, on 22 October we read that

In the night between the 16th and 17th inst., the windows of the chapel of Holbeck were again broken. No wonder, when Holbeck contains such a nest of vermin whom neither the laws of God or man can confine within the bounds of decency, etc.

For which John Robinson, a “Houlbecker,” was in November sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine of £5 (Griffith Wright 1895).

In the summer of the following year he published his first Sunday’s sermon and and his resignation letter. I think that in the following Fawcett is quoting things actually said to him:

A man might oftentimes, by due Care and Watchfulness, perhaps very safely defeat the Schemes, and discourage the Practices of the private Pilferer; and yet, whenever this is done, it is commonly suspected to be done rather for the Preservation of his own Property, than out of a pure Regard to the Public-good: But when he is attack’d in his house, or upon the road by open Plunderers, and requir’d to deliver, or suffer himself to be rifl’d of what he is possess’d of, with some one of these dreadful Alternatives, of having his Brains immediately blown out,” or their hands “wash’d in his hearts Blood,” or “having bis “Entrails pull’d out at his Mouth,” or “being “buried alive,” it will Then surely be accounted highly Romantic in him to reject their demands, out of a Pretence to prevent the bad Influence of their Example; and he will be generally suspected of giving a Proof of his Fool-hardiness or his Avarice, rather than of his public Spirit, by such a Refusal.

In the resignation letter he says that he

perform’d the Duty of the Curacy for near Three Months after he gain’d Admission into the Chapel, and this too, rather to prepare a Say for the peaceable Reception of any other Person whom the Patron shou’d think proper to nominate, that out of any Prospect of reconciling the People to himself.

Fawcett declines to attribute responsibility (“Who the Incendiaries were, the Sufferer neither Pretends to Know, nor Desires to be Inform’d”). He also explicitly excuses the lord of the manor, who at this juncture I take to be Lord Irwin (aka Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount of Irvine) rather than the Whiggish Scholey family, as well as other leading citizens (Fawcett 1755).

Was Fawcett a lousy preacher, or was the mob’s alternative, whoever he was, utterly adorable? Was there a Whiggish or Radical element at work? Was there some element of revenge for Samuel Kirshaw’s victory over James Scott in the struggle from 1745-51 for the vicarage of Leeds (Taylor 1865)? Perhaps you know.

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