Pilgrims & Prophets Christian Heritage Tours

18/12/2024

ORIGINS OF THE MAYFLOWER

Often American visitors assume that the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims begins at Scrooby, but actually the origins of the Scrooby congregation can be more correctly located at Babworth just outside Retford.

This is because the minister at Babworth, Richard Clifton, was a very effective evangelical preacher and attracted the attention of puritans like William Brewster and later William Bradford. But before that, Clifton had been 'headhunted' for the Babworth job from his previous church at Marnham. This was because the puritan congregation at Babworth knew exactly the type of man they wanted and had brought Clifton from Marnham in 1586.

In 1605 Clifton was 'deprived' of his position at Babworth and is likely to have moved to Scrooby where he was for a time the leader of the congregation. However, he does seem to have been looked down on by other 'separatists' of the era including John Robinson, John Smyth and Richard Bernard (whose daughter was a founder of Rhode Island), because he had not been to university.

In the Netherlands, Robinson supplanted Clifton as the spiritual leader. When Brewster, Bradford etc moved to Leiden, Clifton stayed in Amsterdam. He may never have travelled on the Mayflower, but he certainly provided the spiritual impetus that set the whole process going.

Babworth itself remains a lovely English country church - hidden in a forest, but Clifton would be horrified to see how Victorian clergy re-introduced many features which he would have considered horribly Roman Catholic!

Want to know more about where to visit in Mayflower Pilgrim country? You can buy our guide book which tells you about all the places to see.

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https://www.amazon.com/Here-Changed-World-Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire/dp/099278574X/ref=sr_1_5?crid=JLRHY35K9ZT8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.R4HVRsDWwMnyHfIsqGkFUpeKDEfgQvIIusMgSXVl1779jFn65iFkEmzosDtT64CXfetEuFoVOczgdPNoNlr7xmgdv86IiWZPJyor2JHIVR5drvazAnACyahye-RRU4dZ653P3zhygVXClKcgb6EJAeogRfeP65ZDJE81iybLJf9Zko-qLVfvlMNLsNhzAbKAlDvXyyL9eqMCPJ7qelgMZ6MmIyGsE3bBu5P_LqlZN7E.XbV1mRcseIXN-0SvoJY8pDzIG8innIezAOd9-6CpjNU&dib_tag=se&keywords=adrian+gray&qid=1734533834&sprefix=adrian+gray%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-5

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15/12/2024

THE DECLINE OF RELIGIOUS ENGAGEMENT

It is often argued that the decline of religious belief and church attendance somehow followed on from Darwin and evolution. However some intriguing evidence has come to light of the religious engagement of people admitted to Nottingham workhouse in 1841-3. The data was collected by William Felkin, a Baptist, who was opposed to the idea that workhouses should have paid Anglican chaplains - he thought all denominations should have access.

Felkin discovered that those admitted included an actual majority who had no religious faith or engagement at all. 54% gave various answers indicating that faith played no real role in their lives. Given that this was Nottingham, there was a lower than typical level for the CoE as well with only 19%, and perhaps a greater than normal level of other Christian groups.

There were also a few unusual ones. One 'Chartist Christian', one Christadelphian, someone who believed in then 'prophet' Joanna Southcott, a Sandemanian, and two New Testament Disciples. One person said 'anything to get a living' and another 'not what I ought to be'. At least they were honest!

The data is helpful in showing us the level of faith amongst the poorest. So the argument that the Victorian churches somehow 'lost' the urban poor does mot hold in Nottingham - it suggests they never really had them in the start of the era.

14/12/2024

THE BLACK PRINCE OF SCUNTHORPE

Adrian is delighted to be giving this talk in Scunthorpe in the new year. Book now - because it is an amazing story!

Come listen to the extraordinary story of Salim C. Wilson, born the son of a Dinka chieftain, he was enslaved and emancipated in 1878.

09/12/2024

HAUGHTON AND BOTHAMSALL, 1837

Scottish Library have added some OS first edition maps, surveyed in 1837. Here is an extract from a very interesting part of Notts near Walesby.

You will notice that we have 'Bottomsall' rather than the more polite name that it has nowadays - though my old Dad used to insist it was 'Bottomsore' which he found endlessly amusing. I am not sure what he would have made of Sh*ttle Lane being nearby.
SE of there we have the remains of the old house of the earls of Clare at Haughton - which had been long replaced by Clumber at this stage. It is connected across the Meden by only a footbridge. Parish boundaries here are also very interesting - the wandering line south of Bothamsall suggesting the alteration of the rivers.
On parish boundaries we might also note that Lound Hall seems to sit in a little parish of its own - though in fact this was a 'detached' part of Elkesley. 'By tradition' this was explained as being due to a problem over a burial, but Lound is now in Bothamsall. The path from Lound to West Drayton is marked, but today there is a branch off this to Milton....not then in existence apparently.

In Haughton Park we have the ruined chapel, still there of course, and also the clear remains of two fish ponds which can also still be traced. What shows up very nicely is Haughton's duck decoy, supposedly created form the moat of an old castle....but I would love to see a proper study of that! A third fish pond is shown in an area that is now fields.

09/12/2024

AN EPIC TALE FOR WINTER READING

Our epic story of faith, heresy and heroism is still available - a story full of human struggle, hope and life covering both Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. The only book that provides the full background to the Mayflower story and explores the unique national impact of centuries of radical religion. From St Hugh to George Fox and the Quakers, from Thomas Cranmer to the first Baptists - a thousand years of amazing local history.

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06/12/2024

THE LONGEST SERVING BAPTIST?

Rev John Chatwin Jones of Spalding General Baptist church was at one time claimed to be the longest serving Baptist pastor of a single church ever. Born in 1823 as the son of a Baptist minister at Castle Donington, he joined the church in 1848 after taking a degree at Glasgow and retired in 1914, aged ninety-one. He must be one of the few men who preached to four generations of his own family. Jones was the first President of the East Midlands Baptist Association. As well as the church, he also served for fifty-two years on the Spalding Poor Law Guardians who he joined in the 1860s – he was elected their chairman in 1913 despite his great age. He died aged 93.

Jones’s career was not all plain sailing. There was a public row in 1865 when a Baptist builder got the contract for the new school building, rather than the man with the lowest bid. In 1901 he collapsed in the pulpit when already nearly eighty. In 1912 he received some bad publicity when the local sanitary inspector ‘condemned’ a cottage that he owned, and which he rented out to a labourer and his family; Jones then evicted his tenants, the press implying this was revenge for them complaining about the state of the cottage. Jones was certainly not a poor man – he left over £14,000 on his will.

03/12/2024

CHANGING LIFE IN LINCOLNSHIRE

Laugh and cry with all the memories of how life has changed since 1940. Work, food, fun, medicine, home chores - all of life is here, told by those who lived it. Great present for all who know and love the county. Order from:

03/12/2024

DR LIVINGSTONE AND NEWSTEAD

David Livingstone is one of the most famous missionaries who ever lived although it is perhaps equally appropriate to call him an explorer.

He began as a missionary in South Africa in 1841 and quickly decided, ‘'I would never build on another man's foundation. I shall preach the gospel beyond every other man's line of things'. He focused on exploring the ‘interior’ of Africa and by 1851 had reached the Zambezi. He explored further in 1853-4 and then stayed in Luanda at the house of Edmund Gabriel, the local British commissioner for the suppression of the slave trade, because he had become seriously ill.

Next he explored a route down the Zambezi to the coast before a trip back to England where his writings had made him famous. However there was little money from his missionary society to support such expensive explorations, so Livingstone’s role began to change. His book Missionary Travels was to raise funds but also to help his campaign against the slave trade whilst a biographer concluded he was unusually free of racism for his time: Livingstone ‘concluded that Africans are 'just such a strange mixture of good and evil, as men are everywhere else'.

A few years later Livingstone came to Nottinghamshire. William Webb (1829-99), the owner of Newstead, became a great friend of the famous Dr Livingstone and a notable figure – ‘a kind of African Nimrod….towering a head and shoulders above all.’ Livingstone stayed at Newstead in 1864-5 while doing some of his writing. Although Webb never saw Livingstone again after his visit, his daughter remained a visitor for years. His motivation was perhaps different to Livingstone’s, for he had met the missionary when he had become ill on a big game hunting expedition in 1851. He continued to make trips to Africa from 1866 until his death, finding more shocking evidence of slavery in eastern Africa. From 1869 to 1872 he travelled with the famous Stanley.

When Livingstone died in Africa, James Chuma and Abdullah Susi, African members of several British East African expeditions, accompanied his body back to Britain. They visited Newstead in 1874 with another missionary abolitionist, Rev Horace Waller, to assist in the preparation of Livingstone’s journals for publication. Webb was a pall-bearer at Livingstone’s funeral.

Livingstone’s work as an abolitionist is often forgotten. Again, his biographer noted that ‘his numerous reports on the slavers' advance across Africa from the east coast were seen to have led to the treaty against the trade enforced on the sultan of Zanzibar in 1873.’ Newstead’s role in this is therefore worth recognising.

30/11/2024

WHY REMOTE KIRSKTEAD HAD A UNITARIAN CHAPEL

Unitarian chapels are rare enough these days but they were mainly an urban feature, so to have one in a remote Lincolnshire village is very unusual. The story behind it is fascinating.

Kirkstead as a range of unusual chapels – a medieval one, a Primitive Methodist one (maybe not so unusual) and a ‘Unitarian’ one which still has a road sign even though it is now an early years centre.

The small medieval chapel was originally the extra-mural chapel for the nearby Priory and was built about 1230. After the dissolution the chapel became a ‘donative’ chapel, effectively outside the parish system and in the care of its landowner.
By 1685 this passed by marriage to Daniel Disney, a ‘zealous nonconformist’ and he supported ‘dissenting worship’ there. The Disneys set up a trust in 1720 to fund it as a permanent place of Presbyterian worship.

The Disney family were also associated with the Presbyterian congregation at Lincoln where a meeting house was built in 1725, though by the 1770s it became Unitarian.

In the 1790s the Disneys sold their estate here to Richard Ellison, Lincoln’s MP. Ellison somehow managed to get the Presbyterian minister at Kirkstead to lease him the remaining land. Ellison then arranged for an Anglican to take services in the medieval chapel instead but what happened to Disney’s financial legacy was unclear, until a problem was noticed in 1806. There was a legal battle in 1812, which Ellison lost. Ellison took the case to the House of Lords in 1819, at great expense to all.

All this left a compromise that gave the building into the control of the Church of England while the land was awarded to the Presbyterians. During the preceding years the congregation had become extinct while the Anglicans had used the building due to Ellison, so about 1821 a new chapel was built in Kirkstead village for which there was at first no congregation - but when it was revived became Unitarian.

When a minister was appointed for the restored congregation at Kirkstead in 1827 he was Richard Wright, a Unitarian former Baptist, although at first he could find no congregation or even a ‘single Unitarian’ to serve. Wright set out to reach the poor labourers, ‘believing Unitarian Christianity to be identical with the gospel Christ and his apostles preached to the poor and unlearned.’ There were no other nonconformists in the area and so a group of local Methodists helped with singing and held a prayer meeting in the chapel once a week – until, according to Wright, a Methodist circuit preacher put a stop to this.

Griffith Roberts was minister by 1846 and until 1858. By 1877 the chapel seems to have become unused and a few years later it was attracting concern that it might become a total ‘wreck’ although in 1901 it was reported that the minister at Kirkstead had been in post for 43 years. In 1941 Frances Terry was appointed minister and from 1942 served Boston as well whilst still living at Kirkstead. By the 1960s a minister supported both Boston and Kirkstead together. By 2001 it was being used as a nursery with a Unitarian service once a month.

25/11/2024

A BAD NEWS DAY FOR THE METHODISTS

In 1813 the town of Boston (Lincs) was fascinated to hear of the arrest of John Langdon, a man who had lived briefly in the town from 1807 (according to reports) where he professed to be a Methodist preacher. He had there married a local woman ‘of considerable property’ before disappearing again.

News came from London that he had been arrested on a charge of bigamy, on the accusation of another ‘wife’ Mary Robertson that he had married there in 1810. Once again he had attained some sort of respectability by claiming to be a Methodist preacher.

Langdon’s story unravelled to reveal he had four wives….or possibly more. He had been a dockyard worker in Plymouth when he married his first wife in 1798, by whom he had two children. He abandoned her and the children, which was an offence in itself, and went to Sussex where he married another woman in Chichester in 1804 – his first wife being still alive. He then abandoned her and went to Boston…..

Reports said that one of his wives ‘fell into a state of mental derangement’ when she understood what had happened and had to be taken to a ‘mad house’. By the end of 1813 the same woman was placed in the workhouse though she had previously been comfortably off.

There is a record for a Boston marriage between John Langdon and Sarah Flint in 1809; this is two years later than press reports of his marriage there, but fits in with the timetable otherwise.

Langdon’s Boston wife did not have to give evidence since the London bigamy was easily proved. The law only allowed a punishment of up to seven years transportation for bigamy which could not be increased by multiple offences. Langdon duly received this sentence though I have not found what actually happened to him.

After his conviction a Lincoln Methodist wrote in to argue Langdon had never been a Methodist preacher, but the 'Stamford Mercury' refuted this saying they had good authority that he had been. This seems to have been one of his techniques for acquiring women....

23/11/2024

WHY DID THE MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS COME FROM THERE?

Many people from America who come to visit the Mayflower Pilgrim country around Scrooby on our guided tours assume that Brewster and Bradford were somehow pioneers of puritanism. In fact they were just one chapter of a story that had been developing for nearly eighty years by the time they left England.

Brewster and Bradford happened to live in one of the most puritan areas of England where radical Protestantism had been long established. Brewster was able to run Scrooby church as a puritan centre because it was a 'chapel of ease' rather than a parish church, which meant he could choose a curate - but many of the actual parish churches had puritan vicars or rectors as the local gentry chose such men in line with their own opinions.

My map shows Scrooby and the churches around the nearest town of Retford that I know had puritan ministers - men who stood out against aspects of Church policy they felt to be 'Romanish'. You can see that Scrooby was far from on its own - in fact some of these parishes had been nonconforming puritan before Brewster was even born and before the word 'puritan' was invented.

So we should see Brewster and Bradford as a consequence of the area in which they were brought up - where it was uncommonly easy to find a puritan preacher. Intriguingly, most of them chose NOT to leave the country and were still practicing their own form of worship when Brewster was enjoying a cold Massachusetts winter!

19/11/2024

AN INTERESTING BOOK....

Here's a curiosity. While researching for our history walks at Cuckney, I came across press reports of the unsavoury high-society divorce in which George Gordon of Cuckney House was an adulterous party. It turned out that he got into severe money problems as a result, fled to Canada and somehow became a public treasurer - with predictable results. So he fled Canada to the USA where he ended up with a creditable record in the civil war...except that he fought for the South.

This is a very brief summary of a complex life, which I was rather surprised to discover has been turned into a novel by Asa Grant. I am not aware of any connection between Grant and Gordon to prompt this interest, but I had to buy the book to find out.

As a history site, the first thing we have to note here is that there are no sources listed although some are referred top in the notes at the end. Much of the dialogue is obvious fiction, but this still leaves us unsure about some of the events. For example, one Notts press report said that his wife had abandoned him and returned to England - but here she remains steadfast to the end. To the local reader there are a couple of obvious oddities: the most obvious is that references are made to Cuckney Castle as if it were some imposing edifice that a lady would want to paint rather than a few earthworks partly hidden by a graveyard.

The title with the word 'Reclamation' hints at some form of moral redemption and indeed Tomline in the book does find his way to a faith by the end of the story. It would be interesting to know how true this part of the novel actually is but it does not seem to be based on any given sources.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story more than I expected. It is self-published I assume, but it does show that modern publishing creates pathways for interesting books that might never otherwise have seen the light of day.

Based on the true story of colorful Englishman George Tomline Gordon, this story begins in 1857 in England with a man on the verge of losing it all due to his own reckless behavior. Given another chance, he begins his quest for redemption, but we find a very flawed man struggling to find his way....

17/11/2024

MR NORLEDGE, A MISSIONARY FROM NEWARK

Occasionally in my researches I happen on something of especial interest. At the moment I am looking at missionaries who went out from our area all over the world. Lots of people have heard of Hudson Taylor or William Carey but there were countless others who also deserve recognition.

I came across the name of Thomas Norledge of Newark as one such.

Thomas Norledge, was born in Newark and a fruiterer’s assistant, then went to India as a Baptist missionary in 1889. He married another missionary in 1896. He spent much time in Jessore, where he had to battle against rival Muslim preachers, and later Calcutta after his brief return to England in 1901, and was still active in India in 1916. He retired to Croydon and died in 1925.

Norledge might have disappeared into history, but unusually we have him in a picture with a group of other missionaries at a conference - so he is dressed in western clothes although many of dressed the same way as the Indians in daily life. I've indicated this long forgotten Newark man with an arrow.

16/11/2024

MIRACLE AT CUCKNEY

One of the most amazing stories of Christian faith in the 20th Century in our area must be the journey to faith of Jurgen Moltmann, a young German soldier and prisoner of war at the Norton camp near Cuckney in Sherwood Forest.

Moltmann, who had been through deep despair, was brought to Cuckney where the YMCA had created a sort of university to prepare a new generation of German leaders. They had access to some top speakers and theologians.

Some local churches were suspicious of the Germans but Frank Baker, the Methodist minister, invited a few each week to his service and then to Sunday dinner. One of those was Moltmann. 'I want you to know that the seed of hope was planted in my heart around Frank and Nellie Baker's dinner table,' Moltmann later said.

Moltmann went off to become a very important Christian theologian, and Baker too went off to America - although he did manage to write a book on Methodism in Grimsby which was one of his postings. I am delighted now that the university he joined in America have been able to send me some pictures of this very significant individual. He cannot have known what would arise from his kindness at the dinner table, but it yielded a very wonderful fruit.

07/11/2024

RHODE ISLAND COMES TO WORKSOP

It was a pleasure to briefly meet up with members of the Rhode Island Historical Society this morning at Worksop. They had come to pay homage to one of the founders of their state in the USA, Mary Bernard, who was born in Worksop - most probably in the Priory Gatehouse. She went to America as the wife of radical puritan Roger Williams and, having been thrown out of Massachusetts, founded Rhode Island instead.

Mary's father was Richard Bernard, Worksop's puritan vicar in 1605, and the Gatehouse was then being used as the vicarage.

This connection between Worksop and America is very important, but has lacked the attention that the Mayflower Pilgrims have received. Time to put Worksop on the map!

06/11/2024

NETTLEHAM BISHOP'S PALACE

The bishops of Lincoln had a palace at Nettleham for many years. It is shown here in two photos, one from Cambridge air photos in 1950 and another from 1959. We do not know what it really looked like except it likely did have crenelations, so I have included a picture of another Bishop of Lincoln palace at Buckden near Huntingdon.

You may think Buckden was an extravagance, but the diocese of Lincoln included much of Buckinghamshire as well. So the recent Lincoln City v Chesham football game would have been an inter-diocese 'derby' in the 1500s. On the other hand, the bishops did also have a moated manor at Stow Park not far away!

Such houses were often used by royalty as well and it is believed that King Edward I was here when he signed the charter in 1301 that created the office of Prince of Wales. In 1536 it was damaged during the Lincolnshire revolt.

Bishop Henry Holbeach died here of sweating sickness in 1551 and it has been suggested that bishops then avoided the palace. However the interesting Bishop Thomas Cooper then restored it again in the 1570s though his successor Bishop Wickham may have formed a different view after his daughter died at Nettleham. This seems to have been the end of its use.

In 1630 Bishop Williams applied for permission to have it demolished and much of it had gone by 1647.

05/11/2024

GUNPOWDER PLOT AND OTHER 'POPISH PLOTS'.....MORE NOISE!

This year we have seen some posts talking about local connections to the Gunpowder Plot in Nottinghamshire. Such claims are rather indirect and circumstantial in contrast to the very clear links between the Wright brothers and Twigmoor (or Twigmore) Hall in Lincolnshire.

Catholic gentry in Notts were more circumspect in their actions, but they certainly existed. The Markhams of Ollerton are notable whilst Sir Charles Cavendish of Welbeck (d 1617) was suspected of being a Catholic; his sister Jane married the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury of Worksop, influencing him, and we can identify several others. Sir John Holles was paid by King James to try to root out Catholics - he focused on the Countess of Shrewsbury who was more or less under house arrest and her house at Rufford was ransacked.

The actual main link between Notts and the Gunpowder Plot was that Anne Vaux was more or less exiled to Broadholme (close to Lincoln) for having sheltered Father Garnet at the time of the plot.

The main centre of 'recusancy' developed at Holbeck Woodhouse, across the road from Welbeck. This was a known centre of Catholic activity in the early 1600s but developed over the years. Members of the Pierrepont family lived there and Jesuit priests were also living there at least by 1669. By the 1670s there were often two priests there and it became a regional centre with a large Catholic library. Fourteen or so servants were employed there, all of whom were Catholic.

Holbeck Woodhouse was later 'implicated' in the panic over the spurious 'Popish Plot'. Holbeck Woodhouse Hall had continued its status as a Catholic centre under Sir Gervase and Lady Elizabeth Pierrepont, who were siblings. In January 1679 an informer alleged that Holbeck was sheltering two priests who were involved in a plot to take over the country and that Gervase Pierrepont was helping with the supply of weapons. The house was raided in January 1679 in such secrecy that a JP was dragged out of bed in the night to authorise it, but the people in the house still got a very short notice of the ‘raid’ and the priests were able to hide. Another raid a few days later also met with no success in terms of priests, but there was plenty of other evidence. Further raids were conducted in late February. Eye-witness accounts of the raids were written down by a priest, William Aylworth, but perhaps it is remarkable that after the first raids the priests still stayed at Holbeck!

The raids uncovered a library of five hundred books. This library was destroyed although William Aylworth escaped. Yet there was little direct action against the Pierreponts, perhaps because they enjoyed some protection from the Duke of Newcastle. Edward Turner was arrested and sent to London, though he had to go by coach instead of horse due to his ‘fattness’; he died in prison.

Aylworth then returned to Holbeck, and yet again was there when it was raided; this time he hid under a table covered with a long cloth whilst every other part of the room was searched in detail. Gervase and Elizabeth Pierrepont then decided to go abroad in March 1679, with Aylworth following soon after. Both the priest and Gervase died in the Netherlands later that year. Lady Elizabeth was summonsed to appear before Retford magistrates in May 1680 – rather pointless due to her absence! She did, though, die in England in 1689. Also summonsed and absent was Alice Vaudrey, a widow born into Kirklington’s More family – she had escaped to Flanders. Less lucky was Father Edward Turner, who escaped from Holbeck but was captured in Leicestershire and died in the Gatehouse prison in London in 1681.

26/10/2024

GRAVESTONE WITH A WARNING

'Haste to Christ, make no Delay
No one knows their dying day,
Death to me short warning gave,
Took me quickly to my grave.'

So reads the gravestone of George Hardy at S Wheatley in Notts. An odd message, and one he surely did not compose himself. His wife and servant girl went out to the chapel, and when they returned they found him dead in the farmyard - killed by his 18 year old farm labourer. If only he had gone with them....

Round the corner is a totally different grave - a large block of stone on which some initials are carved and the word 'priest'. An old vicar of the parish, with a modest if unusual grave.