A HISTORY OF DORSET 



eight names, of whom many, like the Arundels, Sir John Webb of Great 

 Canford, and Humphrey Weld of Lulworth Castle, are already familiar/'^ 



After the turmoil and struggles of the seventeenth, the eighteenth 

 century with its moral and spiritual destitution, its ' colourless indifferentism,' 

 comes as a period remarkable chiefly for its stagnation and lack of effort 

 generally in the church. '^^ The abuses, pluralism, and non-residence, that 

 marked the clergy in the mass, the poverty of the greater number of them, 

 the great social difference that showed itself between their different ranks '^^ 

 were probably as much present in Dorset, with its rural districts comprising 

 many small and ill-paid benefices, as in other parts of the country. From the 

 churchwardens' accounts of Ashmore, says the historian of the parish, 



to some extent we can trace the degradation of the church. It was found at three vestry 

 meetings held in succession in 1 80 1-2 that the roof of the church was dangerous to 

 worshippers, the pulpit and altar rail rotten, that the gallery, the steps into it, and the seats 

 both in gallery and body of the church were in need of repair. The Holy Communion, 

 it appeared, was celebrated three times a year — Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday — till 

 1 79 1, afterwards quarterly for a considerable number of years.'^* 



As regards those flourishing Nonconformist communities that the previous 

 century had done so much to establish and organize, though there may have 

 been, as has been said, an awakening among them contemporaneous with 

 Wesley's great work,''^ it has also been shown what a disintegrating in- 

 fluence Arianism had especially in the west of England where it seized on 

 the younger and more highly educated generation of ministers.^'* ' Non- 

 conformity went into the controversy united and strong,' say the authors of 

 the Story of Congregational Churches in Dorset, ' having the adhesion of a large 

 number of the most influential and even aristocratic families in the country. 

 It came out of it disunited and impoverished.' '" That Nonconformist suc- 

 cession in Dorset, to which allusion has been made, in many cases shows the 

 manner in which congregations split up and seceded over this controversy. 



As far as the work of John Wesley actually in Dorset is concerned the 

 Joi/rna/ shows that, with the exception of Shaftesbury, he visited the county 

 where his name was already so familiar but rarely. At Shaftesbury he 

 stopped frequently on his way to and from the west. On the first of these 

 occasions, recorded in the Journa/, 31 July, 1750, he preached in the evening 

 in a house accommodating from four to five hundred people, ' it was soon 

 filled from end to end . . . none stirred, none spoke, none smiled, many 

 were in tears and many others were filled with joy unspeakable.' ^'^ Return- 

 ing from Cornwall Wesley called again at Shaftesbury, and the day after his 



^^' Return transmitted to the Commissioners (printed 1 745). 



''' The bishopric of Bristol — the poorest in England — was throughout the century held in succession by 

 men who obviously only accepted it as a stepping-jtone to higher things. Thomas Gooch, 1737-8, stayed so 

 short a time 'as never to have visited his diocese.' Joseph Butler accepting the offer of the bishopric in 1738 

 could not help remarking that it was ' not very suitable either to the condition of my fortune or the circum- 

 stances of my preferment, nor as I should have thought to the recommendation with which I was honoured,' 

 referring to the queen's interest {Diet. Nat. Biog. viii, 69). Bishop Newton, 1761-82, 'plaintively' 

 enumerates the various preferments he was called on to resign on his promotion to Bristol, 'the prebend of 

 Westminster, the precentorship of York, the lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and the genteel 

 office of the sub-almoner.' 



'^ Overton, EngL Ch. in Eighteenth Cent. 287. ^' E. W. Watson, Hist, of Parish of Ashmore, 92. 



"' W. Densham and J. Ogle, Congl. Churches in Dorset, Introd. xiv. 



^= Ibid. App. +24-6. *" Ibid. ''^ fount, ii, 167. 



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