This article describes how and why, in 1839, a harness maker from Marsh Baldon came to be threatened with eviction, and was the subject of newspaper correspondence in the Oxford Chronicle suggesting that his name be added to the Oxford Martyr’s Memorial (at that time in the planning stage) in recognition of the religious persecution he was suffering.
Primitive Methodism According to the correspondence, in 1839 Primitive Methodist services had been held on a number of occasions in 'Poor Old White's house on the Green. Around this time Primitive Methodism was on the rise in Oxfordshire and other rural areas, and the established church, landowners and employers felt threatened by this new religion. It was a form of Methodism which conducted itself in the way of the original methodists including holding their services in the open-air and allowing women to preach; it did not require ordained clergy. It had working class origins and had an important role in the formation of the trade union movement, so two reasons why it created hostility.
The Exchange of Correspondence In these 1839 newspaper articles from the Oxford Chronicle, a heated public exchange unfolds between an anonymous correspondent signing himself 'A Lover of Consistency' and the Reverend C.P. Golightly, regarding the treatment of a local man named White.
The exchange is initiated in February 1839 by the anonymous correspondent - see Fig 1 below; it is addressed to the Reverend Golightly, recently made minister of Toot Baldon who was also on the committee planning the Oxford Martyr’s Memorial (the Victorian monument commemorating protestants burned at the stake during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I). The anonymous correspondent declares that Poor Old White, a Baldons parishioner, ‘has been the object of a petty hostility’, been asked to quit his cottage, and been ‘deprived of nearly all his work’, due to his permitting the Primitive Methodists to hold services at his house. The author asks Golightly to ‘rescue this poor old sufferer from the fangs of irreligious oppression’; and if not then to use his official influence to get the name of this ‘living Martyr’ added to the memorial in Oxford.
Fig 1 First letter dated 16 Feb 1839
In the next Saturday’s Chronicle (see Fig 2 below) Golightly attempts to distance himself from the situation, claiming that he doesn’t know White and this matter was no business of his. He suggested that his getting involved would be deemed interference and that he had no influence over White's landlord.
Fig 2 Second letter dated 23 Feb 1839
The ‘Lover of Consistency’ responds with a further detailed letter (Fig 3 below) pointing out that it is only since Golightly’s arrival in the Baldons that White actually suffered persecution despite holding services for many years, and that because of ‘strong circumstantial evidence’ White ‘has not a morsel of doubt but that some clergymen are at the bottom of it all’. The ‘Lover of Consistency’ states that three people have told White that Mr. Golightly has tried to dissuade them from attending the services at his house on the Green; that in doing so Golightly has used 'an argument so approaching to a threat'. He suggests that ‘consistency of principle requires that a person who honours the dead [i.e. Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer] should also aid living Martyrs’. This third letter (Fig 3 below) does not hold back in its accusations of the bad treatment of 'Poor Old White'.
Fig 3 Third letter dated 2 March 1839
What happened next? Golightly doesn’t appear to have responded to this second letter from the anonymous author.
Assuming we have identified the correct person, ‘Poor Old White’ was John White the harness maker, who would have been roughly 54 at the time of this correspondence and lived on the Green. He continued to live with his family in Marsh Baldon until his death in 1864 aged 79 years. Hopefully his continued presence in Marsh Baldon is evidence the threat of eviction was lifted and work came back his way. Perhaps the newspaper correspondence succeeded as the ‘Lover of Consistency’ intended.
After John White was threatened with eviction, services were held ‘in the open-air on the common’ – presumably this meant the Green – and in October of 1839 a Primitive Methodist chapel (now Chapel Cottage) was opened in Toot Baldon with one of John’s sons Samuel as one of the trustees. It was built on land given by Joseph Fiddler of Yew Tree Cottage, one of only two small landowners in Toot Baldon (Queen’s College or Sir Henry Willoughby owned all but a small amount of Marsh and Toot Baldon).
Other evidence of hostility to Primitive Methodism As well as this ‘persecution’ of John White there is record of initial Primitive Methodist missionaries to the Baldons being intimidated, with one woman preacher being knocked to the ground by a stone hitting her head. This newspaper correspondence demonstrates the prejudice aimed at Primitive Methodists.
If you know any more about 'Poor Old White' we would love to hear from you - please e-mail us at baldonshistory@gmail.com .
Sources:
John Petty - The History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion : from its origin to the Conference of 1860, the first year of the Connexion - 1864 https://archive.org/details/cu31924010556227/mode/2up
Kate Tiller 'The desert begins to blossom' : Oxfordshire and Primitive Methodism , 1824-1860; Oxoniensia 2006 https://www.oxoniensia.org/volumes/2006/tiller.pdf
Newspaper articles with permission from the British Library Collection - Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette 16 February 1839, 23 February 1839, 02 March 1839