CROSS STREET CHAPEL, MANCHESTER
A Brief History
By
Geoffrey Head
Cross Street Chapel, originally the "Dissenters' Meeting House", is the Mother Church of Non-Conformity in Manchester. If we exclude George Fox's Quaker Meeting House at Swarthmore (1688), the original Chapel erected in 1694 on this site was probably the very first building erected for Non-Conformist worship in Lancashire.
For its origins we must look to the religious ferment during the period of the Commonwealth and the latter half of the 17th century. The founder of the congregation was Rev. Henry Newcome, Rector of Gawsworth under the Commonwealth, who became Preacher at the Collegiate Church (now the Cathedral) in 1657. He had been ordained as a Presbyterian and, like other Ministers of that ilk, he was generally favourable to the Restoration of Charles II, relying on the King's expressions of tolerance. Hopes were not realised and the Act of Uniformity (1662) required all clergymen to give their "unfeigned assent and consent" to the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles and to all other rites and ceremonies. On Black Bartholomew's Day, 24 August 1662, two thousand clergy, including one hundred in Lancashire, were ejected from their livings. Amongst their number was Henry Newcome, as he found himself unable to deny the validity of his Presbyterian ordination. Restrictive legislation was enhanced. In 1665 an Act prohibited ministers from living within five miles from any place where they had preached.
For many years Henry Newcome thus conducted a proscribed and clandestine ministry. Yet he had powerful support. At the Collegiate Church his hearers had been numbered in many hundreds and he had the support of the common people. Furthermore he had married well into the Cheshire gentry and was close to such families as the Hoghtons of Hoghton Towers and the Delameres of Dunham. In particular he was a frequent and welcome guest of the influential Mosley family, Lords of the Manor, who lived at Flulme Hall. But, for a while, legislation obliged him to live in Worsley just outside the 5 mile limit. In 1670 he was able to return to Manchester, holding religious ...
[p2] services in private houses, one of which was discovered and a £50 fine imposed, but in 1672 he obtained a licence and preached in his own house with open doors. Later he fitted up a barn in Shudehill for religious services. The spirit of persecution by the justices and others was however ever present and services were always liable to be broken up by supporters of Church and King. Circumstances changed with James II's Declaration of Indulgence in 1687. Dissenting services became legal even during the hours of worship at the Collegiate Church, an assistant, Rev. John Chorlton, was appointed and the barn was enlarged. Henry Newcome was the spiritual adviser of Dame Meriel Mosley and he watched by her deathbed, This did not prevent Sir John Bland, a bigoted "Church and King" man, who had married the Mosleys' daughter Ann, riding by the barn, creating a disturbance and breaking its windows.
William III was proclaimed in 1689, the Act of Toleration soon followed and the Dissenters were at last able to go forward in confidence. The congregation was large and included many wealthy and influential townspeople. Much to the dislike of the High Church party in control of the Collegiate Church, there grew a movement for the erection of a suitable meeting house. Henry Newcome himself was doubtful. Increasing age, and thirty years of trial, had taken their toll on his health and vigour, but he came round at last to support the project. A piece of land called Plungeon's Meadow on the very spot where the congregation still worships was purchased and the building of the Meeting House began on 18 July 1693. The first religious service was held on 24 June 1694 with Newcome preaching on Exodus xx. 24 "Holiness to the Lord". Sadly his infirmity increased. He was only able to take an occasional service in succeeding months and he died on 17 September 1695.
Amongst the most liberal contributors to the cost of the erection of the new Chapel were Sir Edward and Dame Meriel Mosley and their daughter Ann, notwithstanding the hostility of Ann's husband, Sir John Bland. Ann succeeded as heiress to the Lordship of the Manor. After the death of Henry Newcome, Ann decided to return to the established church and build a new parish church to meet the needs of the expanding township, but her Puritan background was still strong. It was said that she was "a thorough church woman, but belonging to that section which received the name of the low church party". It was quite possible that, if Newcome had lived, St. Ann's would not have ...
[p3] been built. In the event her project came to fruition and St. Ann's was consecrated in 1712. In a way it can be claimed that St. Ann's is a daughter church of a Dissenting Meeting House. What is certain is that there has been a close relationship between church and chapel lasting to the present day. Both were from the outset identified with support for the Hanoverian succession in opposition to the High Tory and Jacobite sympathies of the Collegiate Church. The Meeting House indeed was soon to suffer for its political outlook. On 10 June 1715 a Jacobite mob proceeded to the chapel, smashed its doors and windows, overturned its pews and pulpits and left the whole place a wreck. The leader of the mob was Thomas Syddall, a blacksmith, who later joined the Jacobite army. On its defeat he was captured and executed at Knott Mill. It is said that his head was exhibited on the Market Cross within sight of the Chapel. The sum of £1,500 was awarded by Parliament in compensation for the damage and ordinary services were resumed in the Spring of the following year.
As the 18th century progressed the Chapel prospered under a succession of distinguished Ministers. Rev. John ChorIton was after a few years joined by Rev. James Conyngham. Together they conducted an Academy, although they were harassed from time to time by those opposed to dissent. The English Presbyterians were, in general less disposed to dogmatism than other inheritors of the Puritan tradition. Henry Newcome and his fellow dispossessed ministers had not differed in theology from the established church - only in matters of church governance and ritual.
Congregations such as Cross Street had open trust deeds and this left them open to developments in belief. Under Rev. Joseph Mottershead (Minister 1717 - 1771) there began those doctrinal changes which led the congregation towards a Unitarian position. Mottershead himself was an Arian (holding that Christ was a separate person from God the Father, though still divine). Rev. John Seddon, Mottershead's co-pastor from 1741 to 1769 and also his son-in-law, preached undiluted Unitarianism - one of his early sermons included the words "The Trinitarian doctrine, particularly, has been the disgrace of the Christian name and turned Christianity (contrary to its very nature) into a drab, subtle, undefinable science; a matter of difficult speculation and contentious sophistry; the occasion of vain jangling and eternal dispute; an engine of the imposition of tyranny; and the cause of bitter quarrels, furious contentions, mutual anathemas and ...
[p4] the most cruel animosities".
It is fair to say that the more prominent lay members of the congregation did not concern themselves with such forthright sentiments. The Unitarian cast of mind has always favoured a certain pragmatism expressed in concern for educational and social reform. In the last decades of the 18th century and the first decade of the 19th the co-pastors were. Ralph Harrison (composer of the still well-known hymn tune "Warrington" and grandfather of the novelist Harrison Ainsworth) and Thomas Barnes. During their tenure a school to give free education to poor boys was established in the chapel premises. A more long-lasting project was the establishment of the Manchester Academy "on a plan affording a systematic course of education for Divines and preparatory instruction for the other learned professions as well as for civil and commercial life. The institution will be open to young men of every religious denomination, for whom no test, or confession of faith, will be required". This was virtually the last of a long line of dissenting academies formed to provide higher education for dissenters still excluded from the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It survived moves from Manchester to York, back to Manchester, to London and finally to Oxford at the end of the 19th century to buildings designed by Thomas Worthington, the notable Manchester architect. Now a College of the University of Oxford, it still prepares students for the Unitarian and other ministries and also acts as a mature student college for the University.
Prominent in the formation of the Academy was Dr. Thomas Percival, eminent in natural philosophy, an essayist and the author of "Medical Ethics". With Dr. Barnes he was responsible for founding the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society at the Chapel - this most famous society derived from Percival's private dining club. He had a major role, in bringing John Dalton to Manchester and was foremost in pioneering social health reform and the development of the Infirmary. He is commemorated by the "Percival Suite" in this new building. Dr. Barnes was succeeded by Rev. John Grundy, in whose ministry the Unitarian stance of the congregation was confirmed. It was said that his doctrinal discourse created in the town a religious ferment as it had never before witnessed.
As Manchester entered into the 19th century its place as the world's first industrial city in the modern sense was becoming firmly ...
[p5] established. It was the largest village in England, having neither corporate identity nor municipal underpinning to cope with the problems created by the enormous increase in industry and population. Its inadequate institutions were oligarchical and corrupt. Reform was required across the board. This could only be achieved by dedicated pressure from people with a social conscience, possessing the wealth and resources to tackle the vested interests head on. The Cross Street congregation was able to provide people to satisfy these requirements. Many manufacturers and merchants in the cotton and allied industries had become seriously rich. In Unitarianism they saw a freedom of religious thought which matched their laissez faire business philosophy: they were naturally attracted to the liberal Cross Street congregation and it was from Cross Street that an informal group was formed to tackle social and political reform. Dr. Michael Turner in his book "Reform and Respectability" reckons that this core group numbered about eleven in all, of which seven were Unitarians (including five from Cross Street Chapel). They met at the Cannon Street warehouse of Thomas and Richard Potter, wealthy cotton merchants and members of Cross Street. Other members of the Chapel involved included John Shuttleworth, Edward Baxter and John Benjamin Smith (all cotton merchants), John Edward Taylor (first editor of the "Manchester Guardian") and Fenton Robinson Atkinson (a prominent Manchester attorney). They controlled not only the "Guardian" but even more radical newspapers.
The endeavours of the group were assisted by the relaxed attitude of the dominant Cross Street Unitarians, never strongly sectarian, never allowing theological differences to prejudice co-operation with other Dissenters and reform movements. They used their wealth and respectability with discretion and judgement: yet they did not back off when their convictions took them to the very edge of the permissible, or legal. Taylor was tried for libel (and acquitted) in 1819. Shuttleworth organised the defence of the Manchester 38 (plebian reformers accused of administering an illegal oath). Atkinson was ever present with legal advice and representations. All were active in the aftermath of Peterloo. These were not the middle class people castigated by Engels as moving out to the suburbs and washing their hands of the central working class districts and the problems of poverty. By the middle of the century many of their objectives had been achieved: Manchester had become a Borough, the First Reform Act of 1832 had ...
[p6] extended Parliamentary representation, many social reforms had come to fruition. The agitators had become the new establishment. Thomas Potter became the first Mayor of Manchester on its incorporation and was subsequently knighted. Richard Potter was elected MP for Wigan in the first Reform parliament, Benjamin Smith became successively MP for Stirling and Stockport. Ten out of the first twenty-eight Mayors of Manchester were associated with Cross Street Chapel.
As the century progressed, the tradition of public service was maintained. The Unitarian Home Missionary Board was formed in the Chapel to train ministers for working class congregations. Of the thirteen original trustees of Owen's College, later to become the Victoria University of Manchester, four were members of the Chapel, which also provided two University Treasurers and a Chairman of its Council. A Cross Street Trustee gave the University its first Women's Hostel and members were active in the founding of the Manchester High School for Girls.
The Ministers of the Chapel by and large abstained from overt political involvement, but they were active in social work, underpinning the thrust of their laypeople, Especially notable was the long Ministry from 1828 to 1884 of Rev. William Gaskell, who exercised wide influence within and outside the Unitarian movement. He was heavily involved with the Manchester Domestic Mission Society set up by chapel members to provide a practical ministry to the poor "in such a way that at no time should any denominational or sectarian name or test be introduced". He was active in the Lower Mosley Street Schools sponsored by his congregation to serve the areas of wretched housing around the River Medlock. A Fellowship Fund supported congregations in poorer locations. A nurse superintended by a lady of the congregation was financed to visit poor families near the town centre. The Cotton famine presented particular challenges. William Gaskell was committed to working class education and the Mechanics Institute movement and he had numerous literary interests including the Lancashire dialect and his Chairmanship of the Portico Library from 1849 to his death in 1884.
William Gaskell was supported in his endeavours by his wife, the novelist Elizabeth. The congregation in general remained firmly behind the couple in the controversies relating to "Ruth" and "Mary Barton" and in particular "The Life of Charlotte Brontë" despite a few ...
[p7] middle class qualms as to the propriety of raising in print some of the issues confronting conventional Victorian values. William became a legend in his own lifetime, in the Chapel, Unitarianism generally and the life of the City. When he completed fifty years of his Ministry at Cross Street in 1878 there was a soirée in Manchester Town Hall attended by over one thousand people. Apart from a lavish gift of silverware from the congregation, a large sum of money was raised and this was applied at William's request to the founding of a scholarship for ministerial students at Owen's College (now Manchester University).
Yet times were changing. The Chapel, having played a determining role in the rise of Manchester, was to find itself a victim of its own success. The town houses of the wealthy manufacturers and merchants were turned into warehouses and their owners moved into the suburbs and further afield. By the 1860s the trustees and leading congregational members were increasingly professional men - comfortably off but with finite resources compared with the previous generations. The membership list was still healthy, but attendances at Sunday services were declining - pew holders who had removed from the city centre were reluctant to travel back for a service, when they could attend another place of worship nearer to their new home. The decline in the influence of the elite body of Trustees was manifested in a move towards a more democratic form of government and a Chapel Committee was formed for the first time.
The first decade of the 20th century was a difficult one for the Chapel. There is a consensus of belief that Free Church adherence in Britain peaked around 1906. Cross Street Chapel had the additional problem of the continued flight of the middle classes to the suburbs and beyond - the North West was still the Unitarian heartland and there were plenty of local chapels to which they could adhere. But there were other threats.
Manchester Corporation wished to close the graveyard and acquire part of the Chapel site for a proposed widening of Cross Street. In July 1914 a Manchester Improvement Bill came before a Committee of the House of Commons authorising the Trustees to pull down the Chapel, remove the human remains and sell the land for building purposes. The clause was contested, but was carried. A year or two previously it had been announced at a meeting of the City Council that the Chapel was to be given up as a place of worship. Possibly the ...
[p8] Trustees had it in mind to devote the proceeds of the sale of the site to the erection of a successor chapel in one of the developing residential areas. However, the Great War broke out within three weeks and the project went into abeyance. After the war there came a remarkable change of fortune. In 1919 the Trustees appointed Rev. H. H. Johnson to the vacant pulpit. He proved to be a charismatic Minister, filling the Chapel, said to hold two thousand people, Sunday after Sunday and also at Wednesday lunchtime services. He introduced The Wayside Pulpit for the first time into this country. The messages were renewed each week and published as a booklet at the end of each year. It became a feature of Manchester life and was widely taken up throughout the country. Originally all the messages were composed by the Minister - a simple one that achieved much reproduction in all sorts of ways was "Don't worry - it may never happen". Sadly Mr. Johnson had to resign the pulpit because of ill health in 1929 and World War II broke out during the ministry of his successor.
In 1940 the old Chapel was destroyed by enemy action – by fire bombs. There was no interruption of worship. Amongst the ruins a prefabricated building was erected and there the congregation carried on as best it could until the late 1950s, when a new building was erected, partly financed by War Damage payments, partly by an Appeal. The congregation gradually gathered strength in the new building, but in a number of ways it proved far from ideal. At the time of the rebuilding the accepted wisdom favoured dual purpose church buildings with worship areas readily convertible for social purposes. By the late 1980s it was apparent that the resumption of Cross Street's outward looking role was impracticable in the 1959 building. There was much waste of space in the rather bleak main chapel with inadequate ancillary accommodation for congregational and social purposes. The City Centre Churches had come together on an ecumenical basis to face up to the needs of a multicultural society and the Cross Street congregation sought to provide a building able to meet the challenge of a new Millennium. The wider Unitarian movement was also in need of a regional centre to support development work in the North West with appropriate technological and other facilities.
The Trustees were determined to retain the freehold of their historic site and retain a frontage overlooking St. Ann Street. This ...
[p9] pointed to a Chapel with offices above. Provision was made for a concourse surrounding a circular Chapel, an office, a resources centre, a choir vestry / small worship room and a divisible community suite, with kitchen facilities available for meetings, social responsibility work and outside religious, charitable and cultural organisations. The mezzanine floor contains a high quality board room, a Minister's Vestry, a congregational / small meeting room, a plant room and the Chapelkeeper's flat. There is ample toilet accommodation and the disabled facilities include a lift and a loop hearing system. The Resources Centre contains a high specification computer installation and a range of advanced audio visual equipment. The overall concept was to provide a building where numerous activities could take place, but at all times provide a consciousness that there was a place of worship at the core. The naming of the rooms recognises the Chapel's heritage - the 17th century is remembered in the Newcome Vestry, the 18th century in the Percival Suite, the 19th century in the Gaskell and Relly Beard Rooms and the 20th century in the Kenworthy Room. Relly Beard was the Minister of the former Strangeways Church, a prominent educationist and the first Principal of the Home Missionary Board (now the Unitarian College) in 1854: he was a close colleague of William Gaskell. Portraits of both Gaskell and Relly Beard are to be seen on the mezzanine floor. The Kenworthy Room gives tribute to Rev. Fred Kenworthy, Minister of Cross Street Chapel 1950-55, later a President of the General Assembly and Principal of the Unitarian College. In the concourse there is to be seen a board listing the Ministers of the congregation since Henry Newcome. [Two recent] names are those of Rev. Denise Boyd, the Chapel's first woman minister who had much to do with the design and concept of the new place of worship, and Rev. John Midgley, [...] who safely brought the congregation from Cavendish House round the corner in Pall Mall, its temporary home during rebuilding.
In this new Chapel the congregation has problems undreamed of by its illustrious predecessors. Public transport is worse now than it was a hundred years ago. Sunday shopping renders car parking difficult. In a secular society there is a general and continuing decline in church attendance. Nevertheless, come what may, the congregation will continue to be governed by the attitudes set out by two writers not from their own religious background:
[p10]
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The main and primary sources relating to Cross Street Chapel are the Trustees' and Congregational Minute Books held at the Chapel or John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, together with the Annual Reports, programmes, tickets and other literature at the Chapel, relating to the congregation, the Lower Mosley Street Schools and the Manchester Domestic Mission Society.
Frederick Engels "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" is a key source for working class conditions in Manchester during the first half of the 19th Century.
Michael J. Turner "Reform and Respectability" (Chetham Society 1995) covers the impact of Cross Street Chapel on the pressures for Reform. Other useful references to the Chapel are to be found in "Manchester in the Victorian Age" by Gary S Messinger (Manchester University Press 1985), "Boomtown Manchester" by Ann Brooks and Bryan Haworth (Portico Library 1993), "The Unitarian Contribution to Social Progress in England" by R. V. Holt (Lindsey Press 1938), "Truth, Liberty and Religion" (Manchester College, Oxford 1986).
"The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell" ed. Chapple/Pollard (Manchester University Press 1966) and the numerous biographies of the novelist including those by Jenny Uglow and Winifred Gerin and the study of her "Early Years" by John Chapple give further material.
"William Gaskell 1805-84" by Barbara Brill (Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 1984) is another source. The standard history of the Chapel to 1884 was written by Sir Thomas Baker, secretary to the Trustees and twice Mayor of Manchester (published by Simpkin Marshall): although it was written practically at the end of William Gaskell's long and distinguished ministry the only reference to him is "The Rev. William Gaskell was chosen as Mr. Worthington's successor in 1828 and his ministry still continues" – there had been a quarrel about a change of hymn book, always a contentious issue in Unitarian chapels!
"Memorials of a Dissenting Chapel" by Sir Thomas Baker, (Johnson & Rawson, Market Street, Manchester 1884). There is an Internet Archive upload of this which I'd recommend unreservedly were it not that all the illustrations are missing. Modern facsimile printed editions, complete with illustrations, are reasonably affordable, however. But the chapters relating to the Ministers at Cross Street up until 1860 are noted on the tabulation below.
"Essays and Addresses" by Herbert McLachlan, Ch 6 pp 94-112, “Cross Street Chapel in the Life of Manchester”, (Manchester University Press, 1950)
"The Unitarian Home Missionary College (1854-1914), Its Foundation and Development etc" by Herbert McLachlan, (Sherratt & Hughes, 34 Cross Street, Manchester, 1915)
(See unitarian.org.uk/sites/default/files/1915_Missionary_College.pdf)
Geoffrey Head "Cross Street Chapel in the Time of the Gaskells"
Geoffrey Head "Cross Street Chapel's Social and Philanthropic Role in Victorian Manchester"
Geoffrey Head "A brief history of Cross Street Chapel"
That admirable organization The Unitarian Historical Society (UHS) maintains a somewhat sombre online index of deceased Unitarian ministers (and their brief obituaries), a good few of whom had served at Cross Street Chapel and are therefore recorded in the tabulation below. Oddly, though, Jane Barraclough's name is not included.
[p12]
| NB: | (A) denotes an alternative profile following the tabulation |
| (P) links to a portrait |
| Ministers of Cross Street Chapel | |
| Henry Newcome (P) | 1662 - 1695 (TB III) |
| John ChorIton | 1687 - 1705 (TB VI) |
| James Coningham (A) | 1700 - 1712 (TB VI) |
| Eliezer Birch | 1712 - 1717 (TB VII) |
| Joseph Mottershead (P) | 1717 - 1771 (TB VIII) |
| Joshua Jones | 1725 - 1740 |
| John Seddon | 1741 - 1769 (TB IX) |
| Robert Gore | 1770 - 1779 (TB XI) |
| Ralph Harrison (A, P) | 1771 - 1810 (TB XII) |
| Thomas Barnes (P) | 1780 - 1810 (TB XIII) |
| John Grundy (A, P) | 1811 - 1824 (TB XIV) |
| John Gooch Robberds (P) | 1811 - 1854 (TB XV) |
| John Hugh Worthington | 1825 - 1827 (TB XVI) |
| William Gaskell (P) | 1828 - 1884 (TB XVI) |
| James Panton Ham (A, P) | 1855 - 1859 (TB XVI) |
| James Drummond | 1860 - 1869 (UHS) |
| Samuel Alfred Steinthal | 1870 - 1893 (UHS) |
| Edwin Pinder Barrow | 1893 - 1911 (UHS) |
| Emanuel Lewis Henshaw Thomas | 1912 - 1917 (UHS) |
| Henry Harold Johnson | 1919 - 1928 (UHS) |
| Charles William Townsend | 1929 - 1942 (UHS) |
| Frederick Henry Amphlett Micklewright (A) | 1943 - 1949 (UHS) |
| Fred Kenworthy | 1950 - 1955 (UHS) |
| Reginald William Wilde | 1955 - 1959 (UHS) |
| Charles Hubert Bartlett | 1960 - 1967 (UHS) |
| Kenneth B. Ridgway | 1969 - 1971 |
| Edwin Josiah Raymond Cook | 1972 - 1987 |
| Denise Boyd | 1988 - 1996 |
| John Andrew Midgley | 1997 - 2008 |
| Jane Barraclough | 2008 - 2013 (no UHS) |
| Cody Coyne | 2013 |
Eliezer Birch
Background and education
Born: not known
Died: 1717, Manchester
Nationality: English
Parents: Robert Birch
Parents' occupation: Ejected minister of Birch
Parents' career type: Ministerial
Denomination:
- Congregationalist or Independent
- English Presbyterian
Student career:
- Richard Frankland's Academy (1676-c.1678)
Career
Ordination: Ordained twice, firstly as a Congregationalist, and secondly by Presbyters.
Career: Minister at Congleton (c. 1678-88), Dean Row (1688-1707), Yarmouth (1707-10), Cross Street, Manchester (1712-1717)
Career type: Ministerial
References
Printed sources:
- Burden, Mark, 'Academical Learning in the Dissenters' Private Academies, 1660-1720', unpublished PhD thesis, University of London (2012).
- Nicholson, Francis, and Axon, Ernest, The Older Nonconformity in Kendal (Kendal, 1913), 543.
- Nightingale, B., Lancashire Nonconformity, Or, Sketches, Historical & Descriptive, of the Congregational and Old Presbyterian Churches in the County, 6 vols. (Bristol, 1893), V, 94.
- O'Brien, Padraig, Warrington Academy, 1757-1786: Its Predecessors and Successors (Wigan, 1989).
Archival sources
- Heywood Papers, vol 12, British Library, Add MS 45974.
Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 12
Coningham, James
by Alexander Gordon
CONINGHAM, JAMES (1670–1716), presbyterian divine, was born in 1670 in England and educated at Edinburgh, where he graduated M.A. on 27 Feb. 1694. The same year he became minister of the presbyterian congregation at Penrith. Here he employed himself in educating students for the ministry, probably with the concurrence of the 'provincial meeting' of Cumberland and Westmoreland. In 1700 he was chosen as colleague to John Chorlton [q. v.] at Cross Street Chapel, Manchester. He shared with Chorlton the tutorial work of the Manchester academy, and on Chorlton's death (1705) carried it on for seven years without assistance. His most distinguished pupils were Samuel Bourn the younger [q. v.] and John Turner of Preston, famous for his warlike exertions against the rebel army in 1715. During the reign of Anne, Coningham was several times prosecuted for keeping an academy; and though a man who combined strict orthodoxy with a catholic spirit, he was not strong enough to cope with the divergences of theological opinion in his flock. He left Manchester for London in 1712, being called to succeed Richard Stretton, M.A. (d. 3 July 1712, aged 80), at Haberdashers' Hall. His health was broken, and he died on 1 Sept. 1716, leaving the remembrance of a graceful person and an amiable character.
Coningham published three sermons, 1705, 1714, and 1715, and wrote a preface to the second edition of Henry Pendlebury's 'Invisible Realities,' originally published 1696, 12mo.
[Wright's Funeral Sermon, 1716; Toulmin's Hist. View, 1814, p. 246; Calamy's Hist. Acc. of my own Life, 2nd ed. 1830, ii. 31 sq. 257, 523; Cat. of Edinburgh Graduates (Bannatyne Club), 1858; Baker's Mem. of a Diss. Chapel, 1884, pp. 19, 61, 140; Extracts from records of the Presbyterian Fund, per W. D. Jeremy.]
Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 23
Grundy, John (1782-1843)
by Alexander Gordon
GRUNDY, JOHN (1782–1843), Unitarian minister, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Grundy, was born in 1782 at Hinckley, Leicestershire, where his father was a hosier. He was baptised on 12 May 1783 by Thomas Belsham [q. v.] He was educated at Bristol by his uncle, John Prior Estlin [q. v.] In September 1797 he entered Manchester College under Thomas Barnes, D.D. (1747-1810) [q. v.], with an exhibition from the presbyterian fund, but returned to Bristol in the following year and completed his studies for the ministry under Estlin's direction. His first settlement was at Churchgate Street Chapel, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, to which charge he was invited on 19 Feb. 1804. At the end of 1806 he removed to Nottingham as colleague to James Tayler at the High Pavement Chapel, where he was active as a controversialist and as an advocate of Unitarian views. Grundy was elected co-pastor at Cross Street Chapel, Manchester, on 14 Sept. 1818. His controversial preaching alienated some older members of the congregation, who 'had much of primitive puritanism' among them. But in this place many were attracted to doctrinal lectures, which 'created in the town such a religious ferment as it had never before witnessed.' 'Grundy and no devil for ever' was chalked on the walls of his meeting-house. In 1811 he published a sermon, 'Christianity an Intellectual and Individual Religion,' which he had preached on 20 Oct. at the opening of a new chapel in Renshaw Street, Liverpool. A note on the growth of unitarian opinion in Boston, U.S., was added; this led to a correspondence with a Boston minister, Francis Parkman (afterwards D.D.)
In 1824 he accepted an invitation to succeed John Yates and Pendlebury Houghton [q. v.] at Paradise Street Chapel, Liverpool. Before leaving Manchester (September 1824) he was presented with a service of plate (cf. 'Manchester Gazette,' 14 Aug.) A speech at a public farewell dinner by George Harris (1794-1859) [q. v.] produced a long and acrimonious discussion in the public press (in which Grundy took no part), known as the Manchester Socinian controversy, and was followed by the Hewley suit [see HEWLEY, SARAH]. In 1832 Mr. James Martineau (now D.D.) became Grundy's colleague in Liverpool. Failing health led to Grundy's resignation in 1835. He retired to Chideock, near Bridport, Dorsetshire, where he died on 9 May 1843. He was buried in the graveyard of the Unitarian Chapel, Bridport; a memorial sermon by Martineau speaks of their connection as unmarred 'by any ungentle word or thought.' His portrait (in the possession of the present writer) has been more than once engraved. In 1810 he married Anne (d. at Kenilworth, 10 Nov. 1855, aged 76), daughter of John Hancock of Nottingham, and had four sons and four daughters. His son Francis Henry (d. 6 Dec. 1889, aged 67) was the author of 'Pictures of the Past,' 1879, in which are some reminiscences of Branwell Brontë. His eldest daughter, Maria Anne (d. 17 Aug. 1871, aged 61), married Swinton Boult [q. v.]
Besides some sermons, he published: 1. 'Outline of Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion,' Manchester, 1812, 12mo. 2. 'Evangelical Christianity,' &c., 1814, 8vo, 2 vols. 3. 'A Statement,' &c., Manchester, 1823, 8vo (anon.; reply to strictures in the 'Blackburn Mail'). 4. 'The Reciprocal Duties of Ministers and Congregations,' &c., Liverpool, 1824, 8vo. Martineau describes his polemical writings as 'clear, mild, judicious;' he resisted many temptations to engage in personal controversy.
[Monthly Repository, 1812, pp. 198, 264, 498, 1813, p. 478; Belsham's Memoirs of Lindsey, 1812, p. 274; Manchester Socinian Controversy (Hadfield), 1825; Christian Reformer, 1843; Thom's Liverpool Churches and Chapels, 1854, p. 63; Bunting's Life of Jabez Bunting, 1859, i. 44; Carpenter's Presbyterianism in Nottingham [1860], p. 178; Roll of Students,Manchester New College, 1868; Inquirer, 1869, p. 276; Halley's Lancashire Nonconformity, 1869, ii. 435; Browne's Hist. Congr. Norf. and Suff. 1877, p. 421; Wade's Rise of Nonconformity in Manchester, 1880, p. 49; Baker's Memorials of a Diss. Chapel [Cross Street, Manchester], 1884, pp. 50, 147; extract from baptismal register of Great Meeting, Hinckley, at Somerset House; tombstones at Bridport and Kenilworth; private information.]
RALPH HARRISON
b Chinley, nr Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, 1748, d Manchester 1810. Studied and later taught at the short-lived Warrington Academy (Unitarian); assistant minister at Shrewsbury Unitarian Chapel, 1769–71. From 1771 until his death after a long illness nearly 40 years later he ministered at Cross St Chapel in Manchester, originally Independent but turned Unitarian. He ran a boys’ school from 1774; from 1786 to 1789 he was also Prof of Classics and Belles-Lettres at the Manchester Academy. The 2 vols of his best-known work, Sacred Harmony (1784, 1791), included several of his own tunes; an organist himself, he also wrote on geography, grammar and general education. All but one of his published sermons appeared posthumously. No.447=549, 540.
A Return to Another Fold?
Following our article from new member Alan Smith 'Return to the Fold?' in the last issue of the Newsletter, David Gillman has kindly supplied us with some further information about one of the people Alan mentioned:
The Reverend F. H. Amphlett Micklewright, MA, FRHS
His full name was Frederick Henry Amphlett Micklewright, and it was through the encouragement of his grandfather (a Cheltenham solicitor) that the forename Amphlett was included to perpetuate his ancestor, Baron Amphlett. He was ordained an Anglican priest in Manchester Cathedral in 1935, and it was really from that time onward that the style Amphlett Micklewright was exclusively used.
Joining the Unitarian fold in 1941, he ministered to two prominent congregations: Southampton (Church of the Saviour) 1941-43 and Manchester (Cross Street Chapel) 1943-49, but these ministries were not without controversy arising from his various secular sympathies and affiliations.
He left the Unitarian Church in 1949 and rejoined the Church of England, being given the prestigious living of All Saints', Ennismore Gardens, Kensington, London (now the Russian Orthodox Church), until a 'fall out' in 1956, after which he never officiated anywhere, and concentrated on a lecturing career (History and Law) and freelance writing for learned journals, inc, theological debate in 'The Hibbert Journal'.
Called to the Bar (Middle Temple) in 1968, he soon established a reputation for himself as a reviewer to the Legal Press. He was admitted into the Roman Catholic Church in 1974, and contributed many articles to 'The Tablet' and other Catholic publications.
He took the publications of our N.U.F. for a time from around 1947, but it is not known whether he ever wrote for the Society.
I think this is all that I've got the stamina for at the moment (12 Aug 2020) – there is clearly somewhat more to be discovered via the internet – and a lot more, perhaps, to be discovered within the documentary archives of the Cross Street Chapel that I was in the lonely process of cataloguing when the coronavirus kicked-in during early 2020.