THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 
71 
mouth in the year 1745, when a class was formed. This was 
twelve months before Wesley — himself, be it remembered, of Non- 
conformist descent — paid his first visit to the town in September, 
1746 ; and as a result he found several zealous local preachers 
hard at work, and great activity and zeal. More than thirty years 
elapsed before any attempt was made to erect a chapel. The 
members met in private houses, and there was a good deal of open- 
air preaching on the Parade, by the great tree in Briton Side, in 
rooms in Catte Street, Batter Street, in the Moravian Chapel, and 
the Old Tabernacle. The first Wesleyan Chapel in the Three 
Towns was commenced in 1779 in Lower Street, chiefly by the 
exertions of Bedstone, a carpenter in the navy, and JNehemiah 
Jane, a quarterinan in the Dockyard. This sufficed until 1792, 
when the chapel in Buckwell Lane (then called Mud Lane) was 
begun in Mr. Prideaux's garden. Thenceforward the progress of 
Wesleyanism was exceedingly rapid, though the larger population 
and greater activity of Dock gave it such a preponderance that 
Devonport still names the district. Ebenezer Chapel was com- 
menced in 1815; and consequent upon the cessation of the war 
and the depression thus caused, Wesley Chapel had to be closed 
until 1847. Salem Chapel, however, was built in the meantime, 
in 1828. In 1864 the erection of King Street Chapel was com- 
menced ; and now there is to be a new chapel erected in North 
Street, in substitution for Wesley and Salem. 
The period of the great French war, one of the greatest activity 
in all business affairs in Plymouth and Dock, was marked also by 
the greatest activity in religious matters ; thus described by a no 
means friendly contemporary hand: 4 ' Amidst the general dissipa- 
tion and rage for worldly aggrandizement, a religious disposition 
was everywhere prevalent. Churches, chapels, and meetings were 
crowded with auditors ; the latter not only on Sundays, but many 
evenings in the week. Besides public places of worship, parties 
of the pious assembled at each other's houses, and embryo preachers 
here first practised the rudiments of their future calling. These 
spiritual pastors were principally uneducated mechanics and arti- 
ficers in the Dockyard and town. Never perhaps did moralist 
survey a more incongruous spectacle than this place afforded. The 
most open and undisguised profaneness and the most rigid sanctity 
seemed equally predominant. On one hand were heard the revels 
of debauchery and drunkenness ; and on the other, the praises and 
