72 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
prayers of devotional congregations ! The sanctuaries of religion 
were surrounded by the temples of profligacy." * 
This sounds very bad, and would sound much worse, did we 
not reflect that an equally stern censor might write pretty much 
the same, apart from the multiplicity of irregular meetings — the 
true conventicles — about the Plymouth of the present day. The 
contrasts are well-nigh as strong. There were, however, unusual 
religious activities here seventy to ninety years ago, chiefly in the 
direction of Calvinism. Several personal causes were formed by 
different preachers, most of which perished with the failing popu- 
larity of those to whom they owed their origin, while the religious 
societies of their day still continue to exist and flourish. 
The most remarkable feature connected with this period in the 
religious history of the town was, however, the revival of perse- 
cution. The old spirit had never died ; but it had shown itself in 
petty ways. Thus when the great Exeter heresiarch, James Pierce, 
was buried at St. Leonards, and it was proposed to place on his 
tombstone a tribute to the " learned, reverend, and pious" James 
Pierce, the rector objected that Pierce was not learned, because not 
bred at a university ; not reverend, because not episcopally ordained ; 
not pious, because not orthodox ; and so his last resting-place was 
inscribed simply, "Mr. James Pierce's Tomb." And in like 
manner, on the death at Newton Abbot of Isaac Gilling, his 
remains were altogether refused interment. An appeal to the 
owner of the peculiar, Sir William Courtenay, resulted only in the 
gratuitous advice to bury him in the marshes, and so in the end he 
was interred in his own meeting-house. 
But the dead care little about these things ; and the Plymouth 
persecution was of the living. Though the Birmingham Bible- 
and- Crown riots did not extend to Plymouth, the spirit which 
actuated them found its way hither in high places. The Unitarian 
Chapel opened at Devoi.port in 1791 was closed, because the Com- 
missioner of the Dockyard intimated that dockyardsmen who at- 
tended there would be dismissed as disloyal subjects; and by 
perjury and malice the Rev. W. Winterbottom, junior minister of 
the Baptist congregation at Plymouth, was punished for seditious 
words he never uttered, and for treason of which he was not guilty. 
It was the custom in those days for Dissenting congregations to 
celebrate the anniversary of the landing of the Prince of Orange 
* Britton and Bray ley's " Devon," p. 185. 
