My Grandmother And John Wesley (22 April 1977)

My grandmother had a curious way of dealing with the more perplexing of her personal problems.  “Pass me the good book, bairn,” she ordered.  So I fetched the Bible and placed it on her lap.  She then closed her eyes in prayer, opened the good book at random, placed her index finger on the page, then opened her eyes, read the sentence indicated by her finger and lo! All her troubles were over!

I forgot all about that little custom for the next 60 years.  Then I read John Wesley’s Journal and in a flash it all came back to me.

For in that day by day account of his prodigious missionary work, Wesley tells of doing much the same thing and also of using it when seeking a text for one of his 40,0000 sermons.  So my grandmother, who was a Methodist, born in the 1850’s, had only been following the practice of her great mentor, who had drawn his last breath less than 60 years earlier!

Which reminds me that this year should be an important one for North Bucks Methodists, for it sees the 200^th anniversary of Wesley’s first preaching in this district.  This took place at Stony Stratford on July 30, 1777.  The meeting was arranged to be held in a large barn, but the barn was not large enough to contain the congregation.

I am not surprised at this.  Wesley was born in 1703 and died in 1791.  Therefore he was already 74 years old when he came here.  Methodist groups and societies were already proliferating throughout the country in places such as Stony, which had never seen the great man himself, though no doubt they had been visited by one of his several very able lieutenants.

Methodism spread in North Bucks as other non-conformist denominations had spread – first the cottage meeting, then the barn meeting and finally, after some years, the meeting in the local society’s very own little chapel.  Nothing much could be afforded in the way of fancy architecture.

Once a number of societies had been set up or projected in a given area, they were formed into a circuit in accordance with Wesley’s own directions.  I think Stony’s chapel must be accounted as the first local one.  However, in those days, Newport Pagnell was the “capital” of North Bucks, and the local circuit was named the Newport Pagnell Circuit and remained so for many years afterwards.

Newport built a chapel in 1798.  This was followed in 1813 by one at Aspley Guise and also by the first High Street chapel at Fenny, where there seems to have been a society since 1809.

The next in the Newport circuit was built at Salford in 1814 and the next at Little Brickhill in 1819.

The case of Little Brickhill illustrates the principles of mutual help and trusteeship which enabled chapels to be built and which still permeates Methodism.  The site cost £10 and the deed was between on the one side “Thomas Ingram, gentleman,” and on the other “John Linnell, Fenny Stratford, yeoman; John Bennett, Salford, brewer; Jethro Inwood, Newport Pagnell, gentleman; and Samuel Burton, of the same place, wool-stapler.”

The inclusion of a brewer should cause no surprise.  “Small beer” was the beverage of the poorer classed until tea and coffee became cheap enough for them.  Alternatively, he could have been just a vinegar brewer.  The vast majority of early Methodist recruits were the poorest of the poor and there are stories of how minister and lay preachers (called “local preachers” by Methodists) who, sent to take services at village chapel, lunched at the roadside off their own bread and cheese rather than be entertained by village people who could ill afford to do so.

Water Eaton chapel was built in 1830 with special help from Little Brickhill and it is interesting that after the post-war closure of Little Brickhill the Methodists there gravitated to Water Eaton.

First record of a Bletchley society (as distinct from Fenny) occurs in the circuit’s 1839 Michaelmas quarter accounts, where it is linked with Water Eaton.  In the Christmas quarter’s accounts of the same year Bletchley appears separately.  By 1850 they had their own little chapel in Duck Lane (Newton Road) with 60 attending service in the afternoon and 70 in the evening.

I remember that building being demolished after the last war, but it had not been used as a chapel since the erection of the Freeman Memorial chapel in 1895.

There used to be three shades of Methodism – Wesleyan Methodist, New Connexion Methodist, and Primitive Methodist – but only the first and third seem to have operated in the Bletchley area.  There were no doctrinal differences between any shades of Methodism, only differences of emphasis and organisation.  Primitive Methodism arose out of “camp meetings” introduced from America early (*text lost after this point*)