A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



A comparison of this doubtless very incomplete list here given vv^ith the 

 later list of the Quaker meetings in the county points generally to the con- 

 clusion that at the time of Fox's death his cause w^as stronger in Lancashire 

 than it has ever been since. The great period of decline and deadness was 

 in the earlier half of the eighteenth century, but in the absence of authentic 

 records only a fragmentary portion of this story can be recovered, and that 

 merely from a few stray references to extinct meeting-houses, or to disused 

 Friends' burial-grounds. The revival w^hich has taken place w^ithin the last 

 half-century has been a very partial one, and means probably no more than 

 that the Quakers as a body have shared (though in a minor degree) in the 

 general movement of growth and awakening which has touched every phase 

 of church life within the last two generations. 



The organization of the whole body in monthly, quarterly, and annual 

 meetings was established during Fox's lifetime, and from the time of his 

 death became the firm polity of the body. In accordance with this scheme 

 Lancashire and Cheshire form one quarterly meeting, and the Lancashire 

 portion comprises the following monthly meetings : — 



Hardihaw East : Containing Didsbury, Eccles, Leigh, Manchester (three), Penketh, 

 Warrington, and Westhoughton. 



Hardihaw J Test : Containing Liverpool, Southport, St. Helens, and Wigan. 



Lancaster : Containing Calder Bridge near Garstang, Lancaster (four), Wyresdale, and 

 Yealand Conyers. 



Marsdi-n : Containing Bolton, Crawshawbooth, Marsden, Nelson, Oldham (two), 

 RadclifFc, Rochdale (two), and Todmorden. 



Preston : Containing Blackburn, Preston, and Blackpool. 



Swarth Moor : The original centre and fountain head of Lancashire Quakerism, and 

 Heights in Cartmel, are now in the Westmorland quarterly meeting. 



Of very few of these places can anything like a connected history be 

 given, and in the case of the extinct meeting-houses the impossibihty is even 

 greater. 



The Moravians 



With the Quakers we take leave of the last form of seventeenth-century 

 religious movement. On entering the much-maligned eighteenth century 

 we are instantly struck by the change of note. In all the indigenous 

 religious movements which that century originated the dominant and under- 

 lying motive force is no longer either dogmatic or politic. The Calvinism of 

 the seventeenth century is as absolutely gone as is the seventeenth-century 

 absorbing prepossession for a reconstruction of a church system on the basis 

 of the New Testament history. In place of both these tendencies the 

 eighteenth century supplies us with the first attempt which the modern world 

 has witnessed at brmging the light of rehgion to bear on the social darkness 

 and ferocity which gathered in the train of the industrial revolution In 

 their birth-time the Moravian Churches and the Methodist Churches were the 

 only truly missionary churches. And if they are so no longer it is onlv 

 because of the inevitable and foreordained curse which falls on every relieious 

 movement when, deserting the sure basis of mere pure spirituality it builds 

 Itself up into a system, becomes a polity, and barters its immortal heritage of 

 the soul of man for bricks and mortar. ^ 



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