No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Culture and Piety in the Far West: Revival in Penzance, Newlyn, and Mousehole in 1849
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
A brief but classic account of a Cornish revival is to be found in Salome Hocking’s book Some Old Cornish Folk, published in 1903. Writing semi-fictionally but also semi-ethnographically about a number of years before, the author, herself sprung from Cornish Methodism, described the thronging penitents, the exuberant singing and the ‘thrill of excitement’ that went through the village. Crucially she commented on the circumstances. The revival, she explained, had arisen ‘at a time when no one was thinking about it, and no special services were being held. It seemed to have nothing to do with the preacher either…’ The event, she was suggesting, was entirely spontaneous. Although it was triggered by a young girl going forward to kneel as a convert below the pulpit, the subsequent stir was not the result of any earlier contrivance. The awakening was unexpected, not planned. Much of the writing about revivals – periodic episodes of religious enthusiasm attended by mass conversions in evangelical Protestantism – revolves around this distinction. Nineteenth-century advocates of revivals, in America as well as in the British Isles, contrasted the older pattern in which ‘Christians waited for them as men are wont to wait for showers of rain’ with the later way in which the episodes were promoted by ‘systematic efforts’. Subsequently historians have taken up the theme. John Kent, the leading commentator on English revivals of the Victorian era, while recognizing the existence of planning among some early nineteenth-century Methodists, places the dividing line between the prevalence of contagious spontaneity, and the use of devices to achieve conversions, after 1860.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 225 - 250
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008
References
1 Hocking, Salome, Some Old Cornish Folk (1903; St Austell, 2002), 155, 154 Google Scholar. On the book and its context, see Kent, Alan M., Pulp Methodism: the Lives and Literature of Silas, Joseph and Salome Hocking, Three Cornish Novelists (St Austell, 2002)Google Scholar.
2 Colton, Calvin, The History and Character of American Revivals of Religion (London, 1832), 5 Google Scholar, quoted by Kent, John, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London, 1978), 18 Google Scholar.
3 Kent, , Holding the Fort, 30–1 Google Scholar.
4 Orr, J. E., The Second Evangelical Awakening in Britain (London, 1949)Google Scholar, suffers from this weakness.
5 Jeffrey, K. S., When the Lord Walked the Land: the 1858–62 Revival in the North-East of Scotland (Carlisle, 2002)Google Scholar. The book contains a valuable survey of the various historical interpretations of revival at 27–37.
6 Luker, David, ‘Revivalism in Theory and Practice: the Case of Cornish Methodism’, JEH 37 (1986), 603–19, at 619 Google Scholar. See Luker, D. H., ‘Cornish Methodism, Revivalism and Popular Belief, c. 1780–1870’, unpublished D. Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1987 Google Scholar, specifically ch. 7.
7 I am pleased to acknowledge a British Academy grant that enabled me to conduct the bulk of the research for this paper. I am also extremely grateful for the help of John Probert, Cedric Appleby and other specialists in Cornish Methodist history, and for the guidance of the staff at the Cornwall Centre, the Cornwall County Record Office, the Courtney Library of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, and the Morrab Library, Penzance.
8 Penzance Journal, 22 November 1848, 4.
9 Penaluna, W., comp., An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall, 2 vols (new edn, Helston, 1848), 2: 46 Google Scholar.
10 The standard histories of Cornwall and Penzance are Payton, Philip, Cornwall: a History (2nd edn, Fowey, 2004)Google Scholar, and Pool, P. A. S., The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance (Penzance, 1974)Google Scholar.
11 Penaluna, County of Cornwall, 2: 151–2.
12 Waller, Pat A. and Richards, Glyn, ‘Non-conformity in Newlyn’, in Chesher, Veronica, ed., Newlyn Life, 1870–1914: the Village that Inspired the Artists (Penzance, 2003), 101–8, at 103 Google Scholar. On Newlyn, see Perry, Margaret E., Newlyn: a Brie/History (Newlyn, 1999)Google Scholar.
13 Treffry, Richard, Memoirs of Mr. Richard Trewavas, Sen., of Mousehole, Cornwall (London, 1839), 53 Google Scholar.
14 On Mousehole, see Pender, Nettie M., A Short History of Mousehole with Personal Recollections (Mousehole, 1970)Google Scholar, and Perry, Margaret E., Mousehole: a Brief History (Newlyn, 1998)Google Scholar.
15 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, December 1870, 575.
16 Penzance journal, 7 February 1849, 4. Penzance Gazette, 7 March 1849 [4].
17 J. C. C. Probert, ed., 1851 Religious Census: West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (n.p., n.d.). The percentages are proportionate shares of total attendances. Other percentages are taken from this source. The remainder of the Penzance churchgoers were split between several other chapels including two of different Methodist persuasions.
18 Cornish Telegraph, 5 December 1860 [4].
19 Penzance Gazette, 28 February 1849 [4].
20 Robert Young, ‘Revival of Religion in the Penzance Circuit’, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, January 1850,3 5. This is the source for otherwise unattributed information in this paragraph.
21 Truro, Cornwall County Record Office, Circuit Schedule Book for Penzance Circuit [hereafter: Penzance Circuit], 1843–9, MR/PZ/31. The other statistics in this paragraph are from this source.
22 Penzance Journal, 30 August 1848, 4.
23 Penzance Gazette, 13 December 1848 [4].
24 Penzance Journal, 21 February 1849, 4.
25 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 39.
26 John Hobson, ‘Revival of Religion in the Penzance Circuit’, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, May 1832,365.
27 Pool, Penzance, 12.1–2. Penzance Gazette, 15 November 1848 [3].
28 Penzance journal, 16 August 1848, 3.
29 Ibid.; 23 August 1848, 3; 20 September 1848, 3; 4 October 1848, 3.
30 Penzance Gazette, 18 October 1848 [4]; 29 November 1848 [4].
31 Penzance journal, 25 October 1848, 4.
32 Ibid., 20 September 1848, 3; 27 September : 848, 4.
33 Penzance Gazette, 3 January 1849 [3]- West Briton, 19 January 1849 [3]- Penzance Gazette, iyjanuary 1849 [3].
34 Penzance Gazette, 18 October 1848 [4].
35 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 39.
36 Hunt, Robert, Popular Romances of the West of England, 2nd series (London, 1865), 146 Google Scholar.
37 Penzance Gazette, 11 October 1848 [4].
38 Penzance Journal, 20 December 1848, 4.
39 Ibid.; Penzance Gazette, 20 December 1848 [4].
40 Penzance Gazette, 27 December 1848 [4].
41 Rigg, J. H., Wesleyan Methodist Reminiscences: Sixty Years Ago (London, 1904), 72 Google Scholar. Pool, Penzance, 139.
42 Carwardine, Richard, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865 (Westport, CT, 1978), 56 Google Scholar.
43 Riles, John, An Account of the Revival of the Work of God in the County of Cornwall (Penryn, 1814), 8, 20 Google Scholar. Edwards, M. S., ‘Cornish Methodism: a Study in Division, 1814–1857’, unpublished MA thesis, University of Birmingham, 1962, 23 Google Scholar.
44 Hobson, ‘Revival of Religion’, 361–5. Penzance Circuit, 1837–43, MR/PZ/30; 1843–9.
45 Hobson, ‘Revival of Religion’, 362.
46 Young, Robert, Showers of Blessing; or, Sketches of Revivals of Religion in the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion: With Observations Thereon (London, 1844), 229–49 Google Scholar.
47 Young, Robert, ‘A Missionary Sermon’, Cornish Banner (1846–7), 14 Google Scholar.
48 Penzance Gazette, 4 April 1849 [4].
49 Treffry, Memoirs of Mr. Richard Trewavas, 158–62.
50 Penzance Circuit, 1843–9, 27.
51 The Report of the Wesleyan-Methodist Missionary Society (London, n.d.), xv, for successive years.
52 Horner, Elaine, Samuel Symons: Missionary to the Gambia, 1842–44 Google Scholar (n.p., n.d.).
53 Cornish Telegraph, 17 june 1903, 2.
54 Penzance Journal, 6 December 1848, 4. Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 35, where one of the society stewards was Rowe, probably the one with three children converted.
55 Wesley Banner, April 1849, 56.
56 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 38.
57 Despard, G. P., Hope Deferred, not Lost: a Narrative of Missionary Effort in South America in connection with the Patagonian Missionary Society (London, [1852]), 136 Google Scholar. Thompson, Phyllis, An Unquenchable Flame (London, 1983)Google Scholar.
58 Gregory, Benjamin, Side Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism (London, 1899), 246 Google Scholar.
59 William Dale to Jabez Bunting, 12 july 1839 and 15 july 1842, in Ward, W. R., ed., Early Victorian Methodism: the Correspondence of Jabez Bunting, 1830–1859 (Oxford, 1976), 225–9, 273–6 Google Scholar.
60 Smith, George, History of Wesleyan Methodism, 2 vols (London, 1858), 2: 604 Google Scholar.
61 Rigg, , Wesleyan Methodist Reminiscences, 54–5 Google Scholar.
62 Ward, , ed., Early Victorian Methodism, 229 Google Scholar. West Briton, 1 October 1891, 3. London, National Archives, Returns for the 1851 Census for Cornwall, HO 107/1918 [hereafter 18 51 Census], fol. 693.
63 West Briton, 8 October 1891, supplement, 2.
64 Young, Robert, Suggestions for the Conversion of the World, respectfully submitted to the Christian Church (London, 1841), 49 Google Scholar.
65 Rigg, , Wesleyan Methodist Reminiscences, 68 Google Scholar. Young, Robert, The Serious Inquirer after Salvation affectionately addressed (2nd edn, London, 1838), 8 Google Scholar. Cornish Telegraph, 29 August 1851 [2].
66 Young, Showers of Blessing, 456, 273–4.
67 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, September 1866, 847.
68 London, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Home and General Minutes, FBN 7, 22 November 1843, 27 March 1844. Young, Robert, The Southern World: Journal of a Deputation from the Wesleyan Conference to Australia and Polynesia (London, 1854)Google Scholar.
69 Cornish Telegraph, 11 July 1851 [2].
70 Young, Suggestions for the Conversion of the World, 71–3, 92, 98.
71 Penzance Journal, 20 September 1848, 4.
72 Truro, Cornwall County Record Office, Penzance Wesleyan Methodist Local Preachers’Minute Book, 1845–63, MR/PZ/12, 26 September 1848,32.
73 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 34.
74 Robert Young, ‘Recent Revival of Religion at Truro’, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, June 1847, 610.
75 Hobson, ‘Revival of Religion’, 362, 365.
76 Young, ‘Religion at Truro’, 611.
77 Young, Showers of Blessing, 423–8, 451.
78 Young, ‘Religion at Truro’, 610.
79 Young, Showers of Blessing, 447, 458.
80 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 34–5, 36–7, at 34.
81 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, November 1849,1213 (Maria Akerman).
82 B[enjamin] Carvosso, ed., The Efficacy of Faith in the Atonement of Christ: exemplified in a Memoir of Mr. William Carvosso, Sixty Years a Class-Leader in the Wesleyan-Methodist Connexion (London, n. d.), 92.
83 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 37. 8” Ibid., 38.
85 Young, ‘Religion at Truro’, 611; idem, Showers of Blessing, 450–1.
86 Boase, G. C., Collectanea Cornuhiensia (Truro, 1890), col. 543 Google Scholar. Young, , ‘Revival of Religion’, 35 Google Scholar, noting that five children of a circuit steward were converted. Matthews was the circuit steward with five children between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three. 18 51 Census, fol. 741.
87 Penzance Circuit, 1843–9.
88 Boase, G. C., Reminiscences of Penzance, ed. Pool, P. A. S. (Penzance, 1976), 24–7 Google Scholar. Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, December 1849, 1318. During the revival Barnes’s nineteen-year-old assistant at Regent House, Caleb Shipman, started a boys’ class of converts, and shortly afterwards George Bettany, the master at the Wesleyan day school in the town, joined him as a class leader.
89 Penzance Circuit, 1849–64, MR/PZ/32. 1851 Census, fol. 525. Boase, Reminiscences of Penzance, 28.
90 Penzance Circuit, 1849–64; 1864–77, MR/PZ/33. 1851 Census, fol. 736.
91 Corin, John, Fishermen’s Conflict: the Story of a Cornish Fishing Port (Newton Abbot, 1988), 27 Google Scholar.
92 Cornish Telegraph, 28 November 1860 [4].
93 Thomas, Charles, The Taboo in Cornwall (n.p., 1951), 25 Google Scholar. Pender, Short History of Mousehole, 38.
94 Bottrell, William, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, 2nd series (Penzance, 1873), 245, 246 Google Scholar; 3rd series (Penzance, 1880), 156.
95 Harvey, Percy, ‘Mousehole alias Porthennis: the Chronicle of a Seafaring Community’ (typescript, 1994)Google Scholar, no.
96 Harvey, , ‘Mousehole’, 145. Wesleyan Education Committee Report 20 (1859), 42 Google Scholar.
97 Botiteli, William, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (Penzance, 1870), 179 Google Scholar.
98 Pender, Short History of Mousehole, 3 8.
99 Bebbington, D. W., ‘Holiness in Nineteenth-Century British Methodism’, in Jacob, W. M. and Yates, Nigel, eds, Crown and Mitre: Religion and Society in Northern Europe since the Reformation (Woodbridge, 1993), 161–74 Google Scholar.
100 Carvosso, , ed., Efficacy of Faith, 84 Google Scholar. Hobson, John, ‘New Chapels Opened in the Penzance Circuit’, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, July 1833, 523 Google Scholar.
101 Young, , Suggestions for the Conversion of the World, 79, 51 Google Scholar.
102 Treffry, , Trewavas, 68 Google Scholar. Carvosso, , ed., Efficacy of Faith, 15–16, 286 Google Scholar.
103 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, June 1824,425.
104 Ibid., December 1870, 575.
105 A[delaide] W. Young, ‘Reminiscences: a Fisher of Men’, Cornish Methodist Church Record, March 1893, cutting in Truro, The Royal Institution of Cornwall, The Courtney Library, Thomas Shaw Collection, Mousehole section.
106 Lach-Szyrma, W. S., A Short History of Penzance, S. Michael’s Mount, S. Ives, and the Land’s End District (Truro, 1878), 185 Google Scholar.
107 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 37, 35.
108 A. W. Young, ‘Reminiscences: a Fisher of Men’.
109 Young, Showers of Blessing, 441, 43 5.
110 Delta [Robert Young], ‘Revivals of Religion-No. II’, Cornish Banner (1846–7), 219. Most of the account of revivals published in this periodical that Young edited while at Truro is extracted from Showers of Blessing, but there are occasional alterations, of which this is one.
111 Penzance Journal, 31 January 1849, 4. This source gives the victim’s age as 59; the source in the next note gives it as about 63.
112 Penzance Gazette, 31 January 1849 [4].
113 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 37.
114 Beckerlegge, J.J., Two Hundred Years of Methodism in Mousehole (Mousehole, 1954), 24 Google Scholar.
115 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 37. The prominence of women in cottage prayer meetings is brought out by Valenze, Deborah, Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, NJ, 1985)Google Scholar.
116 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 35–7.
117 1851 Census, fol. 199. A. W. Young,’Reminiscences: a Fisher of Men’.
118 Penzance Circuit, 1843–9; 1849–64. Information about new admissions in this paragraph is taken from these volumes.
119 1851 Census, fol. 223.
120 John Ash, William Harry and Thomas Matthews: 1851 Census, fols 225, 224.
121 Respectively Abraham Chirgwin, Susan Tonkin; Nicholas Berriman (though his shop was in Penzance), Benjamin Dale, George Richards; William Wallis; ? Hosking, ? Smith (both unidentifiable in census); and Richard Richards. 1851 Census, fols 309, 267; 624, 306, 236; 283; 277.
122 Young, ‘Revival of Religion’, 36.
123 Penzance Circuit, 1843–9, 26.
124 The process was national. Robert Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford, 1977), 71.
125 Levi Woolley of Mousehole and John Champion of Newlyn. Penzance Circuit, 1849–64.
126 Cornish Methodist Church Record, April 1893; and 1895, Truro, The Royal Institution of Cornwall, The Courtney Library, Thomas Shaw Collection, Mousehole section.