Origins of a Branch of Methodism: Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (24 August 1707 -1791)

The Countess was an English religious leader who played a prominent part in the religious revival of the eighteenth century and the Methodist movement in England and Wales which grew during the nineteenth century. She founded a branch of this in England and Sierra Leone known as the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion.

She helped finance and guide early Methodism and was the first principal of Trevecca College, (in Wales) established in 1768 to train Methodist ministers. With construction of sixty four chapels in England and Wales, plus mission work in colonial America, she is estimated to have spent over £100,000 on these activities, a huge sum at the time. A regular correspondent of George Whitfield and John Wesley she is also remembered for her adversarial relationships with other Methodists.

Selina Shirley was born in June 1707, second daughter of the Earl of Ferrers. In 1728, she married Theophilus Hastings, ninth Earl of Huntingdon. In 1739, Lady Huntington joined the first Methodist society in London. Sometime after the death of her husband in 1746, she joined with John Wesley and George Whitfield in the work of the great revival. Whitfield became her personal chaplain, and, with his assistance, (following problems put in her path by the Anglican clergy from whom she had preferred not to separate) she founded the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion.

In 1748, the Countess gave Whitfield a scarf as her chaplain, and in that capacity he preached in her London houses, She held large dinner parties at which Whitfield preached to the gathered dignitaries. She shared similar views to Whitfield on predestination.

Moved to further the religious revival in a manner compatible with Whitfield's work, she was responsible for founding sixty four chapels and contributed to the funding of others, insisting they should all subscribe to the doctrines of the Church of England and use only the Book of Common Prayer. She appointed ministers to officiate in them, under the impression that as a peeress she had a right to employ as many chaplains as she pleased. In her chapel at Bath there was a curtained recess dubbed “Nicodemus’ Corner" where bishops sat incognito to hear services.

She founded a ministers' training college at (Trevecca) near Talgarth. George Whitfield preached at the opening ceremony. The college moved to Hertfordshire in 1792, and was renamed Cheshunt College. It moved to Cambridge in 1906. Cheshunt College merged with Westminster College.

When she inherited Whitfield's overseas estates in Georgia and Carolina the Countess also inherited slaves. On Whitfield's advice (before he died) she bought additional slaves for an orphanage. Until 1779, Lady Huntingdon and her chaplains were members of the Church of England with which many Methodists were still connected. That year the consistory court prohibited her chaplains from preaching in the Pantheon in Spa Fields, Clerkenwell, which had been rented by the Countess. To evade the injunction, she was compelled to take shelter under the Toleration Act, classifying her as a dissenter.

After victory in the American War of Independence the Crown fulfilled promises to enslaved Africans and African Americans who had joined the British. The British evacuated thousands of former slaves from the colonies About 3,000 were resettled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where they were to be given land and supplies. The Countess sent missionaries to these colonies. Some of these people later went to Sierra Leone, thus establishing the Connexion there.

At a time when many who have been involved in slavery have been eschewed from public memory what do you think? Should the Chapels close? Should monuments be removed?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Oxford Movement and The Gorham Judgment of 1850

  The Privy Council, a secular Court, announced a decision on the case of the Reverend George Gorham in 1850. The Anglican B ishop of Exeter Henry Phillpotts had refused to allow him to become vicar of St. Peter's in Bramford Speke, Devon because of Gorham's theology of Baptism, which Philpotts regarded as not conform ing to the doctrine of the Church of England. Reverend Gorham held that Baptism was not sacramentally effective and that an adult decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour was necessary. Bishop Phillpotts, however, was a High Church Anglican who could not accept what he regarded as a denial of Article XXVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles: Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are discerned from other that be not christened, but is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and o...
Read more

The Gothic Revival in the nineteenth century: Early work by A.W.N. Pugin

  As a young man Augustus Pugin converted to Roman Catholicism and in 1836 published “Contrasts” in which he compares architecture and interior furnishings in Protestant and Roman Catholic settings. One of his drawings illustrates “a faithful picture of Protestant desecration and neglect” and features a defaced altar screen, below which stands an altar table that Pugin describes as a “cheap and ugly table”. In contrast a sketch of an altar and associated furnishings in a Roman Catholic setting is described as “more suited to a fashionable boudoir that to an altar for sacrifice.” Pugin’s aim was to recapture the Gothic style in the buildings and furnishings he designed. An early commission was Scarisbrick Hall, close to Ormskirk in Lancashire. Charles Scarisbrick initially wanted a garden seat and chimney piece, but the young and enthusiastic Pugin set about trying to rebuild the entire property. Pugin produced for Scarisbrick a number of rooms central to the house: the Great...
Read more

A.W.N. Pugin “Improving the taste of young England”

Image
  On September 1 st 1846 the opening of St. Giles’ Church Cheadle took place after five years of building and interior design work by Pugin. The Earl of Shrewsbury whose money had largely funded the project was delighted. He thought it would “improve the taste of young England” and could often be found showing people around. George Gilbert Scott was impressed and the Earl of Shrewsbury commented about his reaction “ the stencilling absolutely made the water run down both sides of his mouth”. St. Giles Church was designed by Pugin to be entirely English in style and was symmetrical. This style no longer reflected his thinking at the time but it was an example of what became known as “Puginism”. The Church cost over thirty thousand pounds and was a full blown work of high romantic art. In it Pugin’s own religious and aesthetic ideals were equally fulfilled. Many notable guests attended the consecration including John Henry Newman, a recent convert from the Anglican to the Rom...
Read more