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The Story of The Old Meeting House, Mansfield J. HARROP WHITE The Old Meeting House before 1870 THE LINDSEY PRESS LONDON W.C.2 First printed 1959 CONTENTS 0 The Lindsey Press 1950 Editor's Preface vii In Memoriam: John Harrop White ix X. The Foundation to 1689 [I 2. The Eight Ejected Ministers in Mansfield 22 3. Toleration and the last years of the Seventeenth Century 39 4. The Eighteenth Century 42 5. The Nineteenth Century to 1849 57 6. A New Start: 1849 to I go0 7. The early Twentieth Century 8. Between the World Wars g. The Second World War and after 10. The Sunday School and Institutions I I. Stained Glass and Memorials List of Chapel-Wardens List of Trustees The Chapel Graveyard Index Genealogy of the Sylvesters of Mansfield Printed in Great Britain 6y Richard Clay and Company, Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES Calamy = An Account of the Ministers etc. whn were Ejected or Silenced EDITOR'S PREFACE after the Restoration in 1660. 2nd Edn., vol. ii, 1713. Edmund Calamy. M AN S F I E L D occupies an honoured place in the annals of Calamy Reuised = A. G. Matthews: Calamy Revised, I 934. Dissent. In the most difficult period of tribulation follow- ing the successive acts of the Clarendon Code, the town, Freedom after Ejection = Alex. Gordon : Freedom after Ejection, I 9 I g. because it was non-corporate, had become from 1665 a Older Nonconformity = Nicholson and Axon: The Older Nonconformity haven from persecution for no fewer than eight ejected in Kendal. ministers. The discovery of a manuscript diary as recently as 1952 now makes it certain that Mansfield can P.R. = Parish Register (S). claim to have been the centre for a nonconformist academy T.H.U.S. = Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society. training students for the ministry under John Billingsley and, subsequently, under his son and successor in the academy, John Billingsley Junior. A continuous history of the congregation meeting as protestant dissenters can be traced from 1665. To John Harrop White's other activities on behalf of the cause to which he devoted a lifetime's service there ILLUSTRATIONS must be added the history of the Old Meeting House, to which he gave considerable labour. He died before the frontispiece manuscript was complete. I was entrusted with the task The Old Meeting House before 1870 of preparing it for publication, and I have taken the Plan of Old Meeting House before 1870, and with opportunity to bring the story down to 1951, the year in extensions to 1942 facing page 96 which Mr. Harrop White died, and in which the congre- gation celebrated the 250th Anniversary of the deed which Interior of Old Meeting House, 1951 97 conveyed the land on which the chapel was erected. Memorial Porch, erected 1942 Since modern research into the origins of dissent has provided a considerable amount of new information not Exterior of Old Meeting House, 1951 contained in the sources Mr. Harrop White was using, the opportunity has also been taken to supplement the original account with the most recent findings. This contribution has been kindly supplied by the Rev. C. Gordon Bolam, M.A., B.D., minister of the High Pave- ment Chapel, Nottingham. The whole process has en- tailed some re-arrangement of material and considerable additions to the last six chapters. Any account of recent vii years must lack the distancing perspective of time, but I have tried to present a just account and to offer the book in a form not unworthy of the man who conceived it. IN MEMORIAM: JOHN HARROP WHITE JOHN HARROPWHITE was born at the Swan Hotel, Mansfield, on the 20th June 1856, his father, Robert White, being the well-known and highly respected land- lord of that historic coaching inn. He was educated at Grove House School, Mansfield, and then at Old Trafford School, Manchester. He practised as a solicitor in Mans- field, and in 1888 married Agnes Mary, daughter of George Valiance, builder and contractor. He served as a member of the Mansfield Commissioners, and then as a member of the Town Council from 1882 to I 894, becoming Deputy Town Clerk in I 894, and Town Clerk in I 900. He was a member of the Nottinghamshire County Council from 1889 to 1895. On resigning the Town Clerkship in 1923 he was elected Mayor for one year, at the end of which he was made Honorary Freeman of Mansfield. He was Clerk to Warsop Urban District Council from 1884 to I 935 ; a meniber of the Nottingham- shire Education Committee; Chairman of the Governors of the County Technical College, Mansfield; Governor of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School; and Chairman of the Governors of the Brunts School. He served on the board of the Mansfield and District Hospital from its foundation until the coming of the National Health Service, and was President from 1922 to 1923 and from I947 to 1948. His services to the Unitarian cause included the Presi- dency of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, I 93 1-2, the Presidency of the North Midland Presbyterian and Unitarian Association, I go I -4, 1916-19, and 1924-5 ; and the Presidency of the Uni- tarian College, Manchester, I 938-40. Always a generous benefactor of the Old Meeting ix X IN MEMORIAM : JOHN HARROP WHITE House, he gave unremitting personal service to its affairs, and was ready to conduct a service in holiday periods or in emergency, continuing to do so right into his ninety- fifth year in which he died. CHAPTER I By his will, apart from the memorial described at the THE FOUNDATION TO 1689 end of this book, he left to the Chapel the sum of ~I,OOO to be invested, and the income to be applied firstly to No one who has been in the Old Meeting House at Mans- placing flowers in the window given by himself and his field can have failed to notice the stone reredos behind the wife in 1928, on the 4th of January and the 3rd of April Communion Table, but comparatively few may have each year, and in the window they gave in 1913 on the read the inscription upon the brass plate below it. It 1st of April and the 27th of September each year, and in was composed by the Rev. A. W. Worthington, based on keeping in order and planting with flowers the grave the phraseology of John Whitlock's A Brief Account, I 807, outside the former window; and secondly to pay EI per p. 26, and runs as follows: annum to the Old Meeting House Sunday School, and the balance to the funds of the Chapel. He also left E~,oooto the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free In Memory of the Conscientious Sacrifices and Christian Labours of the Rev. Robert Porter, Vicar of Pentrich; the Christian Churches, E500 to the North Midland Pres- Rev. John Whitlock, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary's, Nottingham; byterian and Unitarian Association, and LIOOto the the Rev. William Reynolds, M.A., Lecturer at the same Unitarian College, Manchester. His other bequests in- Church; the Rev. John Billingsley, M.A., Vicar of Chester- cluded E1,ooo to the Brunts School, Mansfield, for an field; the Rev. Joseph Trueman, B.D., Rector of Cromwell; annual scholarship to a place of higher education, and the Rev. Robert Smalley, Vicar of Greasley; and others who bequests to the United Nations Association, the National resigned their livings when the Act of Uniformity was passed Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the in 1662. Driven from their homes by the Oxford Act in 1666, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, they found in Mansfield a little Zoar, a shelter and sanctuary, and the National Trust for the Preservation of Places of and united in hearty love and concord, they worshipped to- Historic Interest. gether till the Act of Toleration was passed in 1688 when all who survived the day of persecution returned to their ministry save the Rev. Robert Porter, who remained in charge of this congregation till his death, January aand I 690. The Meeting House erected A.D. 1702 for the exercise of religious worship was restored 1870. LAUS DEO. Here in a few words is related the origin of the Old Meeting Congregation; and, at the same time, there are commemorated by name a few of that great com- pany of ministers who all over the country made their stand for conscience' sake in I 662 and laid the foundations of modern nonconformity. If we are to understand the significance of the inscription and the part that Mansfield I I I2 THE STORY OF THE OLD MEETING HOUSE, MANSFIELD played in the lives of Robert Porter and his colleagues, we effort to take more radical steps by forming separated need to sketch briefly the background against which their congregations in the county. protest and action have to be seen. This more extreme aspect of Puritanism was mani- The ministers who found such happy fellowship and fested in two congregations which have ever since been spiritual encouragement at Mansfield were all in the remembered wherever the story of religious liberty has tradition of Puritanism and, with probably one exception, been recounted : Gainsborough and Scrooby. John were Presbyterian in judgement. Puritanism began in the Smith, B.A.,l preacher to the City of Lincoln from 1603, reign of Elizabeth I as a movement within the Church of was probably already a Puritan at heart at the time of his England to reform the ceremonies of the Church, to raise ordination (158415)~though it was only in 1606 that he the standard of preaching, and to set forth a holier pat- broke with the Church of England by gathering a con- tern of Christian life.

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