Vol 2, pages 1-100 - My Primitive Methodist Ancestors

58 PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHURCH.
much injured our temporal concerns," says N. West. Naturally enough the freemen
whom the authorities were reluctant to punish as they deserved, now felt freer to carry
on their malpractices. On the eve of holding a great love-feast in York, N. West
had to get the tickets of admission printed at a distant town and withhold
their distribution until the morning of the love-feast, in order to hinder the
would-be disturbers from getting access to the meeting by the presentation of
tickets they had themselves got printed. By this precautionary measure " we kept
a great mass of unbelief away" says N. West. This love -feast of the 24th February,
1822, was a memorable one. Though Mr. Herod was conducting a second circuit lovefeast
at Easingwold at the same hour, the country societies sent such large contingents
that some eleven hundred persons were present, and the meeting, which was carried on
for several hours until Messrs. Turner and West and the other labourers were quite
exhausted, resulted in some forty conversions. It was just about this time, as S. Turner
tells us, that the rebels broke the vestry window-shutters all to pieces while he was
and committed to the Sessions for trial.
preaching, and three young men were taken up
This time the disturbers were convicted, and the reign of lawlessness was shaken though
it did not end until some considerable time after. *
The first plan of the York Circuit, April July, 1822, shows twenty -two preache rs
all told, and thirty-two preaching places. Of these, with the exception of York, only
Easingwold has, since 1872, become the head of an independent country station. The
lines of development to be followed by York as a Circuit were already in 1822 laid
down. All round, at no great distance, the ground was occupied or earmarked by
branches or circuits belonging to or formed from Hull Pocklington, Brotherton,
Tadcaster, Ripon and Mai ton. Unless it had attempted distant missions, York Circuit
could only do as it has done strengthen and extend itself within the progressive city
and keep firm hold of the adjacent agricultural villages. It could not, like Scotter,
MK. W. K UM Fill'.
Darlaston or Manchester, hope
to become the fruitful mother of
circuits. At the close of 1824, Tadcaster Branch was attached
to York Circuit, and so continued until 1826. Probably, never
before, or since, has the Circuit covered so wide an area as it did
then, when four preachers were on the ground, two of whom were
Thomas Batty and J. Bywater.
One of the makers of York Primitive Methodism was William
Rumfitt. When he came to York in 1822, a young man of
nineteen, he was already a local preacher. He at once joined
the Society in Grape Lane which he found " in a low and feeble
condition."
This testimony finds incidental confirmation from the
contemporary Journals of Sampson Turner, the first superintendent
* "Afterwards I suffered great annoyance. They came into the room smoked, talked, let
sparrows fly to put out the lights, etc. So I went to law and won. For there was another Lord
Mayor who was favourable to us. He told them he would imprison every one of them on
a repetition of the offence." Notes of a conversation with S. Turner taken down in 1874, with
which his Journal agrees.