A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



converts of this type, who were susceptible to any preacher who took the 

 trouble to interest himself in them. Thus it was that Wesley had to complain 

 of defections to various types of Nonconformity. Of the success of the 

 ' Anabaptists ' at Bingley he said in 1766, ' I see clearer and clearer none will 

 keep to us unless they keep to the Church. Whoever separate from the 

 Church will separate from the Methodists.' ^ 



Yet, although the Church did not exert herself to keep the Methodists, 

 Wesley's influence was eventually powerful, Henry Venn the elder, at 

 Huddersfield, and William Romaine, chaplain to Lady Huntingdon, at 

 Ledston Park, were among Wesley's friends in Yorkshire,' and their names 

 are eminent in the history of the evangelical revival in the Church. His 

 early friend, Mr. Clayton of Wensley, showed the kinship between evangelical 

 doctrine and reverent worship. Wesley found that the thirty houses or so 

 in the chapelry of Redmire furnished fifty communicants.' The ministry of 

 William Grimshaw at Haworth from 1742 to 1762 proved the quickening 

 power of Methodism on the clergy who accepted its tenets. When Grim- 

 shaw came to Haworth, Methodism was a new thing to him ; but his personal 

 experience had turned his mind to its doctrines, and he became their chief 

 apostle in Craven, 'ready to go to prison or death for Christ's sake.' Wesley 

 often preached at Haworth ; Grimshaw guided him through the neigh- 

 bouring hill-country, and was his companion in the riot at Rough Lee.'" 

 Communicants, sometimes 1,000 in number, filled the church, 'and scarcely 

 a trifler among them.' Grimshaw preached three times a month in each of 

 the outlying hamlets of his parish, and lectured on Sunday evenings to the 

 poor who were ashamed to come to church in rags. In accepting constant 

 invitations to preach in the neighbourhood, he used ' his body with less 

 compassion than a merciful man would use his beast.' Long after the novelty 

 of Methodism had ceased his vivid manner of preaching attracted strangers 

 from a distance, and his burial was ' more ennobling than a royal funeral,' 

 attended as it was by a multitude of his disciples, weeping ' for the guide of 

 their souls, to whom each of them was dear as children to their father.'" 



One substantial result of the religious feeling kindled by the evangelical 

 revival is seen in the increased provision of church fabrics which attended it. 

 In Markham's archiepiscopate a considerable number of churches were 

 rebuilt ; two new churches were consecrated in Leeds, and one in each of 

 the towns of Sheffield, Hull, and Wakefield.'^ The seventy years covered by 

 the rule of Markham and his successor, Edward Venables Vernon Harcourt, 

 translated from Carlisle (1808-47), were in fact a most important epoch 

 of religious transition. Under Harcourt the subdivision of large parishes 

 was prosecuted with much energy. The parliamentary grant which provided 

 for the erection of new churches in populous districts was applied to the 

 West Riding with noticeable effect. In 1821 new chapels ivere begun under 

 this grant at Pudsey and Stanley. In 1823 two chapels in Dewsbury parish, 



' Wesley, Journal (ed. F. W. Macdonald), iii, 265 (4 Aug. 1766). 



* Wesley preached in Kippax Church 25 July 1761 (ibid, iii, 70). Romaine read prayers, and Venn 

 arrived while they were in church. Cf. ibid, iii, 48+ (13 July 1772), where he speab of ' Ledstone ' Church. 

 Ibid. 1, 469 (20 May 1744). 10 See note 82, above. 



" Wesley, ibid, iii, 84 seq. (i Apr. 1762), wrote a short memoir of Grimshaw, concluding with a copy 

 of one of Grimshaw's 'plain, rough letters ' to the society in London. 



" Lawton, op. cit. 92, &c. 



76 



