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

THE PERIOD OF CIRCUIT PREDOMINANCE AND ENTERPRISE. 89
clergyman taking his stand, sometimes even amid frost and snow, by chapel door or
window, to listen to the sermon.*
As a circuit, Malton has had a continuous and steady-going existence since 1822.
Until the formation of the Leeds District in 1845, it stood in right chronological order
on the stations of the Hull District, just after Pocklington and
Brotherton, i.e., Pontefract, Circuits. Though Pickering was made
a circuit in 1823, the arrangement was premature, lasting for that
year only, and it had to wait until 1842 before it was again granted
circuit independence. The parent circuit was left with two
preachers and 470 members, while Pickering began
its course
with 347 members and three preachers, of whom, it is interesting
to note, John Fawsit was the third.
It would be unpardonable were this history to contain no
further reference to one who, as an ardent and gifted Bible-student
and author, deserves to be ranked with J. A. Bastow and Thomas
Greenfield. They are few indeed still surviving who remember
his bright personality and his enthusiasm for learning; for he died in 1857 at
the early age of thirty-seven, just when his literary powers were ripening. But
though J. Fawsit died comparatively young, his application had been so intense that
several books came from his pen that deserve to live. The best of these are "The
Sinner's Handbook to the Cross " and " The Saint's Handbook to the Crown," the
latter revised for the press on his death-bed. These books are written in a devout
practical spirit, give evidence of wide reading, and in the allusiveness and occasional
quaintnesses of their style remind us of some of the lighter Puritan writers. J. Fawsit
was born at Scotter, and entered the ministry in 1841, the same year in which
J. Bootland, J. R. Parkinson, D. Ingham, and J. T. Shepherd, well-known preachers of
the old Hull District, began their toil. Alter travelling at Retford, Leeds, Malton,
London, and Bradwell, he settled down at Wellow in the pleasant Dukeries, and did
good service to the Connexion to which he was so attached. To no one whom we have
known certainly to no Primitive Methodist would the title, "The Earnest Student,"
be more appropriate. He was not born to affluence. He had to labour for the support
of his family, and, next after his religious duties, he made that his chief business, but
books he would have.
One of the most vivid impressions of our boyhood
is the mental
picture of his large library, with Sir Walter Raleigh's " History of the World " standing
out among the rest (a title that struck our youthful mind as a tolerably large order).
*The strange story of how John Verity won a chapel from the squire by his preaching seems too
well authenticated to be summaril} r dismissed ;
but it is not given in the text, for the simple reason
that, when the above was written, no reliable evidence had been obtained as to the name and situation
of the village in question. We, however, were inclined to locate the village in the neighbourhood of
Malton, because the story is linked in time and locality with Verity's introduction to the clergyman,
whom we took to be Mr. Simpson. Just before going to press, the Rev. "W. R. Widdowson informs
us he has come across a note of the late Eev. S. Smith, which states that the village was Scagglethorpe,
near Malton, and that the chapel thus strangely acquired continued to be used by us until the demise
of the squire, when it passed out of our hands. The story is told at full length by the late Rev. Jesse
Ashworth, Aldersgate Magazine, 1899.