A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



ampton and Daventry, now known for generations as Independent, long 

 contained traces of Presbyterianism/ and as late as 1780 the new Independent 

 Chapel in King Street, Northampton, was styled by John Wesley the new 

 ' Presbyterian Chapel.' Names, however, often survive realities, and it is 

 certain that, at the succession of the House of Hanover, the Presbyterians 

 of Northamptonshire were fast being absorbed, and that in spite of an 

 increase in numbers of the dissenters which followed upon the Toleration 

 Act. The influence of Doddridge did much to complete this movement. 

 Precise analysis of early Nonconformist history is the more difficult from the 

 want of fixity in their places of meeting. The dissenters at the end of the 

 seventeenth century, and for long after, were mainly yeomen and farmers in 

 the country districts, and largely tradesmen and superior artizans in the towns. 

 The landed gentry, who in the time of Charles I were largely on the Puritan 

 side, had hardly ever pushed their principles to the point of Nonconformity, 

 and quiet tolerance and occasional help from such were all that dissenters 

 could look for. Depending chiefly on yeomen and farmers, it happened 

 in many cases that a particular church had several places of meeting, 

 and those composing it met at different times in villages widely apart ; 

 hence the dates of meeting-houses in particular places reveal the un- 

 doubted existence of a dissenting community a long while before.' Yet 

 in quality, if not in quantity, the reign of George I found dissenters in 

 Northamptonshire at their lowest ebb in spite of the organizing power of 

 Richard Davis, Independent minister of Rothwell, 1658— 1714, whose energy 

 and influence were remarkable. The ejected ministers had mainly been men 

 of university training and solid attainments. Fifty years later the exclusion 

 from the universities had told on the culture of the dissenters, and the old 

 generation was dead. The type of their thought had lost width and tender- 

 ness in the isolation and depression of their lives. It might well have been 

 expected that from the narrow teaching and restricted sympathies which 

 prevailed among them there was little chance of developing a form of 

 Christianity alternative to that ofi^ered by the National Church, and this in 

 spite of their partial success in an earlier age and of the example of Scotland 

 and Protestant Germany. The special importance of Northamptonshire 

 Nonconformity lies in the fact that it was in this county, more perhaps than 

 anywhere, that the forces showed themselves and the individuals arose to 

 whom the development of such an alternative type of Christianity has been 

 due. These forces were first seen prominently at work in the career of Doctor 

 Philip Doddridge. 



Philip Doddridge, D.D., Aberdeen, who was born 1702 and died 

 1 75 1, was for twenty-two years the Independent minister at Castle Hill, 

 Northampton, and his life-work is rightly associated with this pastorate and 

 this county. When he came to Northampton he brought with him the 

 academy of which he was principal, and which already represented the best 

 theological teaching among the Nonconformists.' In spite of life-long ill- 

 health he found time for active citizenship, for the writing of books, and the 

 composing of hymns, besides his duties as teacher and minister, and it is due as 



' See ' Church Books ' of Doddridge's Ordination, and his Life, by Stoughton, 1851. 



' e.g. the ' Church Booi< ' of the Baptist Church at Weston by Weedon shows that the church met at 

 various villages 1 2 miles apart, and up to the present day the Congregationalists of Floore and Weeden Beck 

 form one church. ^ D'ut. Nal. Biog. XV, 160. 



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