Daniel Reed

This essay identifies two previously-unknown Sterne letters of 1752, the first ‘new’ pieces of Sterne’s correspondence to be brought to light in over ten years. First, evidence is forwarded to demonstrate that just two years after delivering the assize sermon ‘The Abuses of Conscience’ at York Minster, Sterne wrote a letter of application (now lost) to serve Richard of Sykes of Sledmere, High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 1752 – an episode entirely unknown within Sterne studies. The second letter, to John Fountayne, Dean of York, provides a personal insight into Sterne’s activities as commissary in the peculiar courts of the diocese of York. A full text of this letter is presented from the original manuscript. These discoveries, it is argued, provide a crucial insight into a period in which Sterne was embroiled in disturbances in York chapter politics, domestic unhappiness, and an ongoing struggle to gain a foothold with both ecclesiastical and lay patrons in order to further his clerical career.

""Treason, as it was defined in the mid-1640s, was a crime against the King. Yet it was for this offence that Sir John Hotham was beheaded on 2 January 1645, for ‘betraying his trust to ye State'. As governor of Hull, Hotham became a figurehead for the Parliamentary cause by refusing Charles I entry to the town in April 1642. A year later, however, an unsuccessful defection to the Royalist side led to his imprisonment and ultimately, his death. In the 'Eikon Basilike', the King's repulsion stands alongside the great political staging points of the 1640s, such as the execution of Strafford, the XIX Propositions and the Irish Rebellion.The martyr-King elaborated that ‘my repulse at Hull seemed at the first view an act of so rude disloyalty, that My greatest enemies had scarce confidence enough to abet or owne it’. This study compares the depictions of Hotham in contemporary published, pamphlet material, and his private convictions as revealed through his manuscript correspondence. It is contended, that Sir John Hotham’s political position remained fairly consistent from 1642 to 1645 but an increasingly radical Parliament, calling for unprecedented powers, shifted the boundaries. As the conflict went on,men of status and property became increasingly alarmed about what 'winning' the war would actually entail.""

The 1698 Act of Toleration legalised Christian worship outside the Church of
England and unleashed a wave of religious fervour throughout the United
Kingdom. In Hull, a group of nonconformist mariners, merchants, and
tradesmen formed a Society for the Reformation of Manners to turn back the
swelling tides of sin they perceived in their community. To this end, they sued
their neighbours and sponsored sermons on spiritual reformation. Their
successes and failures shed new light on the degree to which High Church Tories
were willing to tolerate the Toleration. This paper will introduce the hitherto unexplored records of the Society, touching on their origins, methods, and
ultimate decline.

This paper will take as its basis two collections totalling some 10,000 photographs of Methodist buildings held by the Centre, which have recently been digitised and launched online in January 2019 [www.flickr.com/britishmethodistbuildings/albums]. The photographs, not commissioned by the church, were the work of two individuals (Keith Guyler and Bill Smith), working independently, c.1970s – 2010. They paint a picture of chapels which were once the vibrant hearts of communities, commemorated in their streetscapes by architecture which is sometimes exuberant, at other times plain and functional. The Methodist denomination has suffered massive membership decline in recent decades: many of these chapels are now neglected or sold for other uses.  Conversely, others may be listed – though congregations struggle to maintain them. Some – a minority – are thriving. The paper will explore chapels in and around Oxford, probing tensions between physical and online realities and the research potential each offers. It will also contrast simple with swagger buildings, redundant with busy chapels, in a city which Geoffrey Tyack, the architectural historian, has described as a frontier town.

This paper discusses two previously-unknown Sterne letters of 1752, the first ‘new’ pieces of Sterne’s correspondence to be brought to light in over ten years. First, evidence is forwarded to demonstrate that just two years after delivering the assize sermon ‘The Abuses of Conscience’ at York Minster, Sterne wrote a letter of application (now lost) to serve Richard of Sykes of Sledmere, High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 1752 – an episode entirely unknown within Sterne studies. The second letter, to John Fountayne, Dean of York, provides a personal insight into Sterne’s activities as commissary in the peculiar courts of the diocese of York. The full text of this letter will be presented from the original manuscript. These discoveries, it is argued, provide a crucial insight into a period in which Sterne was embroiled in disturbances in York chapter politics, domestic unhappiness, and an ongoing struggle to gain a foothold with both ecclesiastical and lay patrons in order to further his clerical career.

The aim of this investigation is to re-appraise the functioning of the Anglican Church in the North of England during the first half of the eighteenth century. This will be achieved through an analysis of ecclesiastical administration and patronage within the Northern Province, with particular emphasis on the life and career of Lancelot Blackburne, archbishop of York from 1724-1743.

Like most new religious movements, Methodism encountered opposition and found itself embroiled in literary controversies with its critics from the outset. The hundreds of anti-Methodist publications issued during the eighteenth century, and Methodist responses thereto, have already been extensively investigated by scholars. Less well-known, however, are the external controversies in which British and Irish Methodism was engaged during the nineteenth century, especially in its first half, and the publications to which they gave rise.

In this work, Clive D. Field offers the first modern (albeit still provisional) bibliography of that literature, comprising 862 books, book chapters, and pamphlets for 1800–1900 in which Methodists either responded to literary attacks from Anglicans, Catholics, Nonconformists, and Freethinkers or initiated attacks on them, for reasons of doctrine, polity, or on other grounds. Many of these disputes were local, rather than national, in nature. The bibliography, preceded by a substantial introduction, is fully annotated, including edition histories and brief biographies of authors and subjects, and fully indexed, by author, date, short title, and place of imprint. The volume will be essential reading for anyone researching Methodist relations with other Churches in this period.

Clive D. Field is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham and a former Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library. He has researched and published extensively in the social history of British religion from the eighteenth century to the present, with particular reference to statistical sources and the history of Methodism. His most recent book (2022), also from the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, is Methodism in Great Britain and Ireland: A Select Bibliography of Published Local Histories.

Methodist commitment to social justice predates the Church itself, and is often what draws its members to the Connexion. Our Justice Journeys brings together papers from the 2022 Methodist Heritage conference celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Hugh Bourne, alongside other essays touching on Methodist collections, histories, and work in present day. Between them,  they explore many different aspects and narratives of Methodist social justice work, covering nearly three centuries of Methodists striving for a better world.

Methodism has been a dominant force in the religious landscape of Great Britain and Ireland since its emergence in the eighteenth century. Its development has been richly documented in terms of the careers and achievements of the Wesleys and other connexional leaders. Yet it was at the local level that the ‘lived experience’ (social as well as spiritual) of Methodism was most evidenced, through the members and adherents of individual societies and chapels and in Methodist schools and colleges. This volume offers the first systematic bibliography of local histories of Methodism. It cannot be comprehensive (for, at its peak, there must have been at least 17,000 chapels and other preaching places in the British Isles) but it does list around 4,000 of the most important publications on local Methodism from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. They are arranged topographically, according to current civil administrative units, and with a cumulative index of place names.

Clive D. Field is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham and a former Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library. He has researched and published extensively in the social history of British religion from the eighteenth century to the present with particular reference to statistical sources and the history of Methodism. He has been a member of the Wesley Historical Society since 1971.

This volume of essays on women Methodist preachers arises from two conferences held in 2019, the 350th anniversary of the birth of Susanna Wesley. The chapters range widely in topic and time, from Susanna’s own life and witness, to the often hidden histories of women preachers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to the challenges faced by women in today’s Methodist Church.

This timeline is dedicated to mapping the documentary record of a single eighteenth-century life, that of the clergyman and civil magistrate, Jaques Sterne (c1695-1759). He is most popularly known as the uncle of Laurence Sterne, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767) and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) but was a far more notable figure than his nephew in the North of England during his own lifetime. This timeline is designed to investigate the life and career of an historical figure through the building blocks of the surviving archival record, and by the means of charting key events and geographic location indicators. It is intended both as resource for those interested in Sterne studies, and eighteenth-century society more broadly.

This timeline is not presented at the current time as being exhaustive of all known references to Jaques Sterne, and will be periodically updated with further information.

[version 3.3, updated June 2024]

This page is dedicated to mapping the documentary record of a single eighteenth-century life, that of the clergyman and civil magistrate, Jaques Sterne. He is most popularly known as the uncle of Laurence Sterne, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767) and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), but was a far more notable figure than his nephew in the North of England during his own lifetime. This page is designed to investigate the life and career of an historical figure through the building blocks of the surviving archival record, and by the means of charting key events and geographic location indicators. It is intended both as resource for those interested in Sterne studies, and eighteenth-century society more broadly.

An ongoing project begun in 2013 to hand-list hitherto uncatalogued material relating to Westminster College, a Methodist Training College founded in 1851. It was originally  located in the City of Westminster, and then relocated to Oxford in 1959. The college's Harcourt Hill site is now the Westminster Institute of Education, part of Oxford Brookes University.

An internal report written in 2011 on the holdings of 'The York Gazetteer' newspaper at East Riding of Yorkshire Local Studies Service, giving recommendations for the better preservation and promotion of a scarce collection of eighteenth century newspapers. More particularly, the report draws on the connections between 'The York Gazetteer' and the Yorkshire author and clergyman, Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). This was based on research conducted at that time, and some of its conclusions have since been revised.

In 2009, East Riding of Yorkshire Archives & Local Studies Service was awarded Heritage Lottery Funding in order to celebrate the contribution made to the town of Beverley by John Edward Champney. One aim of this successful funding bid was to reconstitute the ‘Champney Bequest’, a portion of John Edward Champney’s personal library that was gifted to Beverley Public Library in 1929, and formed the nucleus of the reference collection in the town. In 2009-2010, work was undertaken to locate the original volumes from the bequest (since dispersed among the various library collections in Beverley), and to conduct conservation work on several valuable titles which were urgent need of repair. At the conclusion of the ‘funded phase’ of the project, numerous volumes remained unaccounted for. At this stage, Daniel Reed sought to locate Champney titles which were still considered to be either lost, missing, or to have otherwise been removed from the collections. His subsequent searches revealed upwards of 200 Champney volumes that had not been identified during the course of the HLF project.

This temporary exhibit was hosted by East Riding of Yorkshire Museums Service in the Treasure House, Beverley, between March and May 2012.

The exhibit  explored the life and work of the clergyman and author Laurence Sterne, with particularly reference to his activities during the 1742 county poll for Yorkshire, using books and artefacts from the collections of East Riding of Yorkshire Archives & Local Studies Service.

Further research conducted since 2012 allows for some of the details contained in this exhibit to be revised. One such example, is that Jaques Sterne began to act as a Justice of the Peace for the East Riding of Yorkshire much earlier than first supposed, in 1728.

Having visited Toronto City Archives in 2009, during the 175th anniversary celebrations of Toronto's city status, I identified a letter at East Riding of Yorkshire Archives & Local Studies Service which made reference to this event. DDX965/3/1 contains a letter from John and Ann Woodill, to their brother, Abraham Pickering of Driffield, East Yorkshire. This finding was reported in the local press, and was the subject of a feature on Look North television news.

'The late York is now the City of Toronto the City has the last 10 years and is improving very fast it contains 11000 inhabitants there is every appearance of the City becoming a large place it is the site of Government for the upper province'