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By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 258 
when the Act of Uniformity was passed, retired from the Estab- 
lished Church. Indeed, the Rev. T. Jones, who was ejected from 
Calne, is supposed to have assisted to found the Society which met 
at the Grove Meeting. 
At the close of the 17th century a Mr. Dangerfield was the 
stated minister of this place of worship. In 1715 Mr. Thomas 
Barker filled that office, and continued to do so till 1729. He 
was succeeded by Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Joshua Read, who seems to 
have been associated in his office with a Mr. Wereat. The views 
of this last-named gentleman were in sympathy with what is com- 
monly termed Arianism, and, in consequence of this, a secession 
took place of several who had been accustomed to attend the ‘Grove 
Chapel.’ Walter Grant, of Monkton Farleigh, and John Pitman, of 
Bradford, were the chief persons who retired, and through their 
instrumentality it was, that, in 1740, an Independent Chapel was 
built at Morgan’s Hill, the first minister being the above-mentioned 
Dr. Joshua Read. This last-named chapel was subsequently en- 
dowed by Walter Grant and John Pitman, by will, with property 
amounting, when invested in the public funds, to £2144 138s. 2d., 
three per cent Reduced Annuities. 
Immediately after this secession from the ‘Grove Chapel,’ we find 
Dr. Roger Flexman appointed as its minister. He remained there 
about eight vears, when (in 1747) he removed to Rotherhithe, and 
was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Billingsley, a member of an old 
Presbyterian family of Ashwick in Somerset, the founders of the 
Meeting-House at that place. Mr. Billingsley resigned the office 
at the end of ten years. 
In 1763 Mr. James Foot of Chard, a pupil of Dr. Doddridge, 
was minister of this chapel, and continued to be so till his death, 
(about 1777,) when he was succeeded by Mr. Williams of Calne, who 
died in 1810. This last-named gentleman was engaged in some 
kind of secular appointment, which was exceedingly distasteful to 
many of the old Presbyterian attendants at the chapel. Before his 
decease many of the more influential and wealthy of them had 
either conformed to the Established Church, or left the district, 
and the places of those who were removed by death were not sup- 
