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Letters and Records of the Dissenting Congregations: David Crosley, Cripplegate and Baptist Church Life

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Debating the Faith: Religion and Letter Writing in Great Britain, 1550-1800

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Abstract

This chapter examines the status and function of letters in manuscript records of dissenting Churches of the post-Toleration years, concentrating on the correspondence of the Baptist Church of Cripplegate. The letters are placed in the context of controversies about Church government and discipline and the rhetoric used during the scandal caused by the excommunication of its Northern minister David Crosley for drinking, lying and adultery is assessed. In doing so, the chapter pays particular attention to the epistolary exchanges between metropolitan and provincial congregations and to what they reveal about conceptions of the Baptist ministry.

This chapter was written during a period of academic leave granted by the CNRS at the Maison Française d’Oxford in 2010–2011. It could not have been researched without the support of Regent’s Park College, Oxford, whose manuscripts I cite with permission. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Emma Walsh and her colleagues, Julian Lock, Emily Burgoyne and Sheila Wood, and for discussion about Crosley, to John Briggs, Stephen Copson and Timothy Whelan.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Cripplegate (Curriers Hall) Church Book, 1689–1723’, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, FPC E1, fol. 99v. Thereafter CCB. Interlinear insertions are indicated by < >, editorial interventions by [ ] and deletions by The original spelling and punctuation have been maintained.

  2. 2.

    CCB, fol. 1r.

  3. 3.

    Reading, 1656–1770, photocopy of the original in Berkshire Country Record Office, ref. D/N2 1/1, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol.1.

  4. 4.

    Coningsby and Tattershall, 1654–1728, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 3.

  5. 5.

    ‘The Church Book att Covent Garden Anno: 1691 to Anno: 1699’, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 4.

  6. 6.

    Bromsgrove, volume 1, 1670–1715, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 3.

  7. 7.

    Slapton, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 7.

  8. 8.

    ‘1651–1832. Records and Letters Relative to the Baptist Church at Hexham, from Oct 1651 to July 1680. Followed by Records of the Church at Hamsterly in the County of Durham’, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 17.

  9. 9.

    Reading, fol. 1.

  10. 10.

    The Axminster Ecclesiastica, 1660–1698 (1874), ed. K. W. H. Howard (Ossett: Gospel Tidings Publications, 1976), 2.

  11. 11.

    ‘Maze Pond Church Book, Folio (1691–1708)’, The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 93.

  12. 12.

    Guildhall Library MS 20228/1A and MS 20230.

  13. 13.

    CCB, fol. 23v.

  14. 14.

    CCB, fol. 5r.

  15. 15.

    For Crosley’s adoption of Baptist views through the agency of ‘one woman of any accompt’, see ‘The Copies of Some Christian Letters’, Greater Manchester County Record Office, William Farrer Collection L1/43, fols [173–8]. Thereafter Notebook. The foliation is inferred. I am quoting from the manuscript rather than Frederick Overend’s at times inaccurate transcription of Crosley’s letters.

  16. 16.

    See for instance, Notebook, fols [173–8, 181–2, 191–5].

  17. 17.

    The main contemporary sources of information on Crosley’s life are, James S. Hardman, ‘David Crosley, the Pioneer Rossendale Baptist’, in Four Articles by James S. Hardman, published for the Sion Baptist Church (Cloughfold, 1947), 3–13; Ian Sellers (ed.), Our Heritage: The Baptists of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, 1647–1987 (Leeds: The Yorkshire Baptist Association and the Lancashire and Cheschire Baptist Association, 1987); B.A. Ramsbottom, The Puritan Samson: The Life of David Crosley, 1669–1744 (Harpenden: Gospel Standard Trust, 1991); S.L. Copson, Association Life of the Particular Baptists of Northern England, 1699–1732, English Baptist Records 3 (Baptist Historical Society, 1991); M.F. Thomas, Tottlebank Baptist Church, 1669–1699 (1999, privately printed); J.H.Y. Briggs, ‘Crosley, David (1669/70–1744)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6790, accessed 28 April 2011].

  18. 18.

    CCB, fol. 30v.

  19. 19.

    CCB, fol. 32r.

  20. 20.

    CCB, fol. 36r.

  21. 21.

    CCB, fol. 34r.

  22. 22.

    CCB, fol. 51r.

  23. 23.

    CCB, fol. 33r.

  24. 24.

    CCB, fol. 33r.

  25. 25.

    CCB, fol. 33v.

  26. 26.

    CCB, fol. 33r.

  27. 27.

    CCB, fols 49r, 48v.

  28. 28.

    CCB, fol. 35r.

  29. 29.

    CCB, fol. 48v.

  30. 30.

    CCB, fol. 35v.

  31. 31.

    CCB, fols 37r–37v.

  32. 32.

    CCB, fols 46r, 48r.

  33. 33.

    CCB, fols 37r–37v.

  34. 34.

    CCB, fol. 46r.

  35. 35.

    CCB, fol. 64r.

  36. 36.

    CCB, fols 50r, fol. 51v.

  37. 37.

    CCB, fol. 35v.

  38. 38.

    Notebook, fols [312–16].

  39. 39.

    CCB, fol. 61v.

  40. 40.

    CCB, fol. 63r.

  41. 41.

    CCB, fol. 63v.

  42. 42.

    CCB, fol. 46v.

  43. 43.

    CCB, fol. 53r.

  44. 44.

    Notebook, fol. [97].

  45. 45.

    Notebook, fol. [248].

  46. 46.

    CCB, fol. 52v.

  47. 47.

    CCB, fol. 56r.

  48. 48.

    CCB, fol. 56r.

  49. 49.

    CCB, fol. 64r.

  50. 50.

    CCB, fols 46v, 48v.

  51. 51.

    CCB, fol. 64r.

  52. 52.

    ‘Plain and Honest Directions, and Christian Counsels’, in N.T., The Old Man’s Legacy to his Daughters (1736), 91.

  53. 53.

    CCB, fol. 36v.

  54. 54.

    CCB, fol. 66v.

  55. 55.

    CCB, fol. 57r.

  56. 56.

    CCB, fol. 54r.

  57. 57.

    CCB, fols 56v–57r.

  58. 58.

    CCB, fol. 59r.

  59. 59.

    CCB, fol. 53v.

  60. 60.

    CCB, fol. 60v.

  61. 61.

    Notebook, fols [437–40].

  62. 62.

    Notebook, fols [238–44].

  63. 63.

    CCB, fol. 38r.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aix Marseille Université, LERMA (EA 853), 29 avenue Robert Schuman, 13621, Aix en Provence, France

    Anne Dunan-Page

  2. IUF, Geneva, Switzerland

    Anne Dunan-Page

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Correspondence to Anne Dunan-Page .

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  1. , Études Anglophones, Université de Provence, Aix-Marseille I, Avenue Robert Schuman 29, Aix-en-Provence, 13621, France

    Anne Dunan-Page

  2. Ouest Nanterre-La Défen, Université Paris, Avenue de la Liberté 200, Nanterre Cedex, 92001, France

    Clotilde Prunier

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Dunan-Page, A. (2013). Letters and Records of the Dissenting Congregations: David Crosley, Cripplegate and Baptist Church Life. In: Dunan-Page, A., Prunier, C. (eds) Debating the Faith: Religion and Letter Writing in Great Britain, 1550-1800. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 209. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5216-0_5

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