Albert N. Rogers, President
Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society
Denver, Colorado
As we all know this year 1964 is the 300th anniversary of the departure of Stephen Mumford from England and his arrival in Rhode Island in 1664; and therefore it is appropriate that Seventh Day Baptists should celebrate this event since it was through his testimony to the Sabbath truth that our first church was founded on American soil at Newport, R. I., in 1671.
Stephen Mumford was a member of the Bell Lane Seventh Day Baptist Church in London, and so he could not but witness to his faith among the Baptists of the New World. He persuaded a number that the Fourth Commandment should still be kept, and they had to separate when they found it impossible to continue in fellowship with the other Baptists who opposed the truth for which they stood. Thus he was the human instrument used by God to establish our denomination in America where it succeeded in taking root and in expanding, while unfortunately the cause declined in the country from which he came.
There is no doubt that Stephen Mumford decided to migrate across the Atlantic Ocean because of the difficult circumstances in which not only the Seventh Day Baptists but other Baptists and Dissenters found themselves in England at the time. They hoped to find greater freedom over the seas.
Cromwell and his army were opposed to this conception of the church
and wanted everyone to have complete freedom of worship as they thought
right, to set up independent churches if they so desired. His army was
largely composed of Independents, now known as Congregationalists, and
Baptists; and so they fought for freedom of conscience and worship and
asserted that the civil power had no right to interfere in any way with
religious matters.
Tillam, of course, was quite notorious being mixed up with all kinds of plots and schemes, the greatest of which was the emigration of 100 families in 1666 from East Anglia to the Palatinate, in Bavaria, South Germany. In this he was assisted by Christopher Pooley. However this anticipates a later part of our story.
When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 he was succeeded by his son Richard, who was not strong enough to hold the Commonwealth together. So General Monck, who was in charge of Cromwell's Army in Scotland, opened negotiations with the exiled Prince Charles, son of Charles 1, for his restoration to the throne.
It was a party of these led by Thomas Venner who sallied forth from his meeting place in Coleman Street with an armed band of 50 men in January 1661, and, no doubt with the assistance of others, terrorized the city of London for about four days. Venner was an Independent, but there was also a Baptist church in the same street and others not far away. Venner indeed was opposed to the Baptists, and promised that when he succeeded in his revolution "the Baptists would know that Infant Baptism is an ordinance of Jesus Christ." However, it was not long before he was captured and ut to death with others of his deluded followers.
Naturally this experience did not encourage the king to carry out his promise of religious tolerance; for it became evident that many Dissenting meeting houses were used for political plotting as well as preaching, and Baptists unfortunately were not all free from blame. The famous Col. Thomas Blood, who plotted against the government and later tried to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, was a Baptist. During the war which Charles declared on Holland, Baptists passed information to the Dutch; and if the Dutch had succeeded in landing in England they would have had 30,000 men from Cromwell's old army to help them. They saw no more harm in doing so than Charles himself saw in being in league with the French king, Louis XIV, to please whom he had declared war on Holland which was then the home of religious liberty and had shown Prince Charles hospitality while he was in exile.
On this point, the Mill Yard Church which is the continuation of John James' congregation is still a Fifth Monarchy church; but you need not be alarmed. I am not likely to lead our congregation on the streets of London to attempt the overthrow of the government of our gracious queen, Elizabeth 11! But John James greatly emphasized the point; and that, in the circumstances of his time, was a highly dangerous thing to do with the consequence that he was arrested and condemned for his belief.
The third Act was the Conventicle Act of 1664 which forbade the assembly of more than five people in addition to the family of the house for religious services except according to the Prayer Book, under penalty of fines and transportation. For the third offense they could be banished to the American plantations, excepting New England and Virginia. If they should return or escape, death was the penalty. Many were sent to the West Indies where they endured great hardship. Vast numbers suffered in all parts of England and Wales. It is said that 8.000 perished in prison during the days of Charles 11. It may have been this Act which led Stephen Mumford to decide to migrate to Rhode Island, to banish himself by so doing rather than wait for the Government to do it. This Act was meant to silence the clergy ejected in 1662.
The fourth Act of the Clarendon Code was the Five Mile Act, which forbade any preacher or teacher who refused the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy to come within five miles of any important town.
Before this the Bell Lane Church in London, which seems to have been gathered by John Belcher the bricklayer in 1662, kept in touch with Stephen Mumford at Newport. Their letter was dated 26 March 1668, four years after he had migrated, and signed by eleven members of Bell Lane. Among these signatures appear the names of Belcher and William Gibson who later came to Newport and was the second pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church there. A month before this on 2 February 1668 Edward Stennett wrote to Newport from his place in Abingdon, Berkshire.
Another Sabbath-keeper in England wrote to those in Newport two years later. This was Joseph Davis, Sr., who had accepted the Sabbath in 1668 and was in prison at Oxford Castle in 1670 as a result of a fresh wave of persecution for attending conventicles. It would seem that those in Newport had heard of him because they wrote to him on 4 July 1669, and to this letter he replied 26 January 1670 bemoaning the fact that Baptists and Independents were preaching against the Sabbath. He exhorted the Sabbath-keepers on Rhode Island not to be discouraged by opposition. He seems to have written again on 7 February 1670 another letter in which he mentioned that he had kept the Sabbath for two years. This was the Joseph Davis who later bought the Mill Yard property and erected the old chapel and other buildings in 1691, and endowed the cause with his charity for Sabbatarian Protestant Dissenters,
In 1671, the year of the founding of our Newport church, we find Bampfield at Salisbury where he formed another congregation but this resulted in his imprisonment in Salisbury Jail for 18 months. After his release he came to London and there at Bethnal Green he organized a third church on 5 March 1676. This congregation he moved to the famous Pinners Hall in 1681, and from this hall his congregation took its name. This church sent him out as a Messenger to five or more churches in Wiltshire (Salisbury), Hampshire, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Berkshire (Wallingford). He also wrote a letter of brotherly love to churches in Holland and New England. Francis Bampfield was arrested at Pinners Hall in 1683 and died in Newgate Prison, London, on 16 February 1684. Edward Stennett succeeded him as pastor of the Pinners Hall Church in 1686 and ministered there for three years, being followed by his famous son Joseph Stennett in 1690.
The Mill Yard church was also in touch with Rhode Island, and wrote to the church at Newport on 21 December 1680 having by this time left Bullstake Alley and gone to East Smithfield. That is eleven years before it really became the "Mill Yard" church.
The Bell Lane church after various migrations from place to place also came to Pinners Hall in 1690 and linked up with Joseph Stennett and the Pinners Hall church. John Belcher, pastor and leader of the Bell Lane church, was still living for he died in 1695. One party met in Pinners Hall on the Sabbath morning, and the other in the afternoon.- but they attended each other's services and eventually merged in 1702.
It might be well to learn something of this famous Dissenting meeting place of the 17th century, Pinners Hall. Originally the site off Old Broad Street, and not very far from where Liverpool Street Station now stands, was occupied by an Augustinian Priory, dedicated to the famous Bishop Augustine of Hippo, North Africa. At the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII about 1540 the Friars House, Cloisters and grounds were granted to a Mr. Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, who died in 1572 after building Winchester House on part of this site. Much history is imbedded in the names of present day streets and alleys of the city of London.
In 1580 Verselyn, a famous glass blower, came from Venice and being granted a patent by Queen Elizabeth I set up a factory off Old Broad Street. It was on the site of this Glasshouse that Pinners Hall was built by the Company of Pinmakers or Pinners incorporated in 1626 by Charles 1. This hall was let to various groups of Dissenters during the reigns of Charles I and 11. In 1649 Thomas Gunn's Baptist Church hired the hall and fitted it with two tiers of galleries. Richard Wavell's Baptist Church hired it on Sundays from 1609-1705 and this hall was let to Bampfield's church on Saturdays from 1681. Just a few years before the famous John Bunyan had preached here from 1676-79 having been released from Bedford Jail in 1672 when Charles 11 proclaimed an indulgence. He had been in prison twelve years. Unfortunately Bunyan was one of the opponents of Seventh Day Baptists in his time. It was to this famous hall that the Bell Lane church came in 1690.
As for Belcher, he was quite a notorious character, associated with the leading Fifth Monarchists of his time such as Tillam and Col. Blood. In fact, he was such an ardent Fifth Monarchist that he was reported in the State Papers of 26 September 1661 as the chief preacher in Coleman Street and as one who was likely to follow in the footsteps of Venner. Belcher was one of the 150 signatories of the Fifth Monarchy, Manifesto on August 1654, which was really a protest against the new attitude taken up by Cromwell in 1653 when he had himself proclaimed Protector. Previously he had expressed Fifth Monarchy sentiments in his speech to the Nominated Parliament, but in the following months had evidently concluded that these ideas were impracticable in the situation which confronted him and which demanded a strong hand. So he set up the Protectorate; but this move turned the Fifth Monarchy men against him, for in assuming the title of Lord Protector he was taking a position which they regarded as rightly belonging to Christ. Hence this Manifesto of 1654.
Dr. Peter Chamberlen was the famous physician who served Charles I and Charles 11. He seems to have been spared by the king despite his heresies as a Baptist and a Sabbath-keeper because of the value of his medical services to the royal family, a curious example of how the king could turn a blind eye when it was in his own interest to do so. Dr. Chamberlen would have attended the Queen, Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of Portugal and a Roman Catholic. He had been an Independent, but in 1648 he had become a Baptist and in 1651 accepted the Sabbath to which he remained faithful till his death in 1683. Evidently Jeremiah Ives had not been able to shake his convictions on this point.
Chamberlen and some of his Sabbath-keeping group also signed the Fifth
Monarchy Manifesto. Another signatory was John Clarke of Rhode Island,
and he signed as one of "The Church that walks with Mr. Jesse." This was
the famous Henry Jessey, a well known Baptist minister . of that time.
How was it that John Clarke of Rhode Island signed this Manifesto?
A few days later there was a Fifth Monarchy insurrection at Shoreditch led by Venner, so here we find him opposing Cromwell before Charles came to the throne. In April 1658 several People were arrested in Coleman Street, including Clarke and John Belcher, showing a connection between the famous Rhode Islander and the founder of our Bell Lane Church; but this was probably before the debate in the Stone Chapel which converted Belcher to the seventh day. Clarke defended himself at his trial with great spirit and even accused his judges of treason, producing various Acts of Parliament to prove it and throwing them into confusion.
After the death of Cromwell another Fifth Monarchy Manifesto was presented to Parliament in September 1659, but Clarke's name is not among the signatories although Jessey signed it. This may indicate that Clarke was beginning to change his views. Clarendon in his history of those times says that some Baptists in 1659 made overtures to Prince Charles. Perhaps Clarke sympathized with them, and believed that the restoration of the monarchy was the only solution to the crisis.
A few days after the defeat of Venners insurrection in January 1661, there appeared a pamphlet entitled "The Plotters Unmasked, Murderers no Saints, or a word in Season to all those that were concerned in the late rebellion against the peace of their king and country, on the sixth of January last at night and the ninth of January. By a friend of Righteousness, and a Lover of all men's Souls, knowing that one is of more worth than 10,000 worlds." The author was John Clarke, who never associated himself with the extremists but now took the opportunity of disowning the rebels.
On the 20th January, 1661, Clarke put in a petition for a royal charter to be granted to the Rhode Island Colony. By the end of March he had succeeded and prepared to return to Rhode Island. No doubt his loyal pamphlet had helped him to gain favor with the king.
Gibson became assistant to the first pastor of the Newport church, William
Hiscox, one of the first converts made by Mumford. When Hiscox died in
1704, having been pastor for 33 years, Gibson succeeded him. It was under
Gibson that the First Seventh Day Baptist Church in Hopkinton was organized
in 1708 as the denomination began to move westward.
The Bell Lane church, as we have learned, merged with Bampfield's Pinners Hall church in 1702, seven years after the death of its founder John Belcher. After Joseph Stennett's death in 1713 the Pinners Hall church declined but continued to worship until 1721. It then left Pinners Hall and came to share the premises of the Mill Yard church, remaining until 1727. Then it called Edmund Townsend of the old Natton church, near Tewkesbury, to be its pastor and under him moved back into the City of London and worshipped at Curriers Hall, Cripplegate. He was its pastor for 36 years till 1763. Samuel Stennett served as its pastor from 1767 till 1785 and Robert Burnside from then till 1826; and under him the church moved to Red Cross Street in 1800 and to Devonshire Square in 1812. Burnside became pastor of the Mill Yard church and was succeeded at Devonshire Square by John Brittain Shenstone who was pastor from 1826 till his death in 1844. By this time the tiny congregation had moved to Eldon Street Baptist church, where this once famous Calvinistic Seventh Day Baptist church founded by Francis Bampfield finally became extinct in 1847. The last member, Mrs. Shenstone, died in 1863, just over 100 years ago.
Other helpful books from which further information has been gained are:
Dictionary of National Biography (Both British and American.) Articles in various Encyclopedias.
Notes copied from a MS of the researches of the late Dr. W. T. Whitley of the Baptist Historical Society, who kindly loaned it to the author many years ago.