ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



spread. Up to 1843 this Synod was in connexion with the Church of 

 Scotland, but the Scottish disruption of that year forced it to assume an 

 independent position as the Presbyterian Church of England/^" 



The Baptists 



There are comparatively few references to Anabaptists in Lancashire 

 prior to the Indulgence of 1672. John Wigan of Birch became a Bap- 

 tist in the later years of the Commonwealth, and there were Anabaptists 

 or conventicles of Anabaptists, at Manchester in 1669; as also at Bury; at 

 Liverpool 'a frequent conventicle of about 30 or 40 Anabaptists' most of them 

 rich people ' ; at Cartmel ' some Anabaptists ' ; besides an undescribed con- 

 venticle of ' Phanaticks ' at Lund chapel in Kirkham parish/^^ With such a 

 list before us it is a little strange that the only Baptist licence taken out in 

 Lancashire in 1672 was one for the house of John Leeds in Manchester. 

 There is no other discoverable reference to this body, and it seems almost 

 impossible to suppose any connexion between this licensed house and the 

 eighteenth-century Coldhouse Baptist church in Manchester. There is an 

 assumption also of a Baptist interest at Warrington, dating from the Com- 

 monwealth, but the church itself does not emerge until 1694, and when it 

 does so emerge it appears as settled at Hill CHffe on the Cheshire side of the 

 river, though it had meetings also in Warrington. It was doubtless from the 

 Hill ClifFe church that the Baptist cause in Liverpool was re-introduced. 

 Looking upon Hill ClifFe as a Cheshire church it would appear that the Old 

 Dissent bequeathed no indigenous Baptist church to the county of Lancaster. 

 For when the denomination reappears after the Act of Toleration it is as a 

 distinct importation from either Yorkshire or Cheshire, in the main the 

 former. Between 1684 and 1692 the Yorkshire Baptist preachers, William 

 Mitchell and Davis Crosley, preached in the Bacup district, and with few 

 exceptions it may be said that it is from these men and from this centre that 

 the Baptist churches of the county have sprung. 



The two preachers appear to have started the church at Bacup and that 

 at Clough Fold simultaneously. The trust deed of the Bacup school-church 

 is dated 16 April, 1692. For a time these two churches were united, being 

 styled generally the 'church in Rossendale,' but by 17 10 they had again 

 ; become separate. Clough Fold (trust deed dated 1705) continued under 

 Mitchell, and from his death (about 1706) has had a distinct sequence of 

 pastors down to the present day. The separate history of the Bacup church 

 is obscure for the early years 171 0-18, but in the latter year David Crosley 

 returned from London to Bacup, and a church was again formed under his 

 pastorate which has had an equally continuous but more chequered history 

 down to the present day. 



It is a moot question whether the church at Tottlebank, which is 

 regarded questionably as the oldest Baptist church in the county, is to be con- 

 sidered as an ofF-shoot of the church in Rossendale, or rather as a second 

 .parallel outcome of the work of these same Yorkshire pioneers. It would 



"» A few congregations have remained outside this union, some of them being parts of the Established 

 Church of Scotland. 



"■ Lamb. MS. 639. 



2 73 '° 



