A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



The Toleration Act of 1689 was welcomed by the dissenting 

 communities of the county. Whatever they suffered in past years 

 was now happily at an end. Though the provisions of the Act were 

 meagre enough, they were sufficient to ease dissenters of harassing dis- 

 abilities, and give them scope for the free exercise of their religion. 

 The Act required them only to take out licences for their meeting 

 houses, and the justices had no alternative but to grant them. 1 

 Some of the dissenting ministers, however, disregarded the obliga- 

 tions of the Toleration Act and refused to take out licences. Daniel 

 Jackson was not content with ministering to his Stanwix congregation, 

 but intruded into the parish of Burgh, where he held conventicles at 

 night in wilful defiance of the law. With eight of the principal 

 inhabitants of that place he was brought before the Christmas Sessions, 

 1692, 'ffbr an unlawfull assemblie under pretence of religious worshipp.' 

 It is stated in the indictment that to the number of forty persons they 

 had assembled in the night at the house of Jannet Hodgeson of Westend, 

 widow, for that purpose. Nicholson of Kirkoswald was charged at 

 Michaelmas, 1694, for a conventicle, probably at Penrith, as the others 

 with whom he was indicted belonged to the immediate neighbourhood. 

 At the same sessions Anthony Sleigh of Penruddock, clerk ; George 

 Nicholson of Kirkoswald, clerk ; and Thomas Dawes, of the same 

 place, clerk, were similarly indicted with sundry of their co-religionists. 

 It is a matter of no surprise that the law should be put in force against 

 these dissenting ministers who were foolish enough to disregard it. 



Towards the close of the seventeenth century public attention was 

 directed to the alarming increase of coarseness and immorality through- 

 out the kingdom. It soon became the subject of a royal proclamation, 

 which was ultimately embodied in an Act of Parliament. But the 

 friends of the ' Society for the Reformation of Manners ' were destined 

 to meet with considerable opposition in Cumberland. The dissenting 

 element went cautiously to work in order to entrap the leaders of the 

 church party into blessing the enterprise. One great mistake the 

 originators seem to have made, when they called the movement a 

 covenant, a league, or association. There was something in a name to 

 the churchmen of this period, and it is manifest they did not relish a 

 novelty on English ground which came to them wearing a presbyterian 

 aspect and dressed in the Genevan garb. The bishop of Carlisle was 

 surprised into giving his patronage, and matters looked like peace. But 

 that hope was doomed to sudden disappointment. Few outside those 

 versed in church matters can well understand the position of Archdeacon 

 Nicolson in his attitude to the movement. His action was not 

 prompted by expediency or bigotry, but by conscience and duty. 

 Though he admitted the evil needed the efforts of all Christian people, 

 he yet maintained that the ' Established Church ' was the responsible 



1 The licences issued by the justices in Quarter Sessions to the nonconforraing communities of the 

 county are very numerous and extend over a long period. Many of them will be noticed in the parish 

 history. 



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