Introduction

In the early 1970s a substantial amount of manuscript material once belonging to the Unitarian College in Manchester was transferred to the collections of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, forming the basis of what is now the library’s Unitarian Collection. One part of these materials was a bound volume comprising nearly 60 manuscript letters and more than 120 printed materials related to the efforts by Dissenters to repeal the Test Acts between 1787 and 1792. These materials were collected by William Wood (1745-1808), Unitarian minister at Mill Hill in Leeds; they are among the most complete records of the repeal movement collected by any one individual at that time.

William Wood was originally from Cottingtree, Northamptonshire, where his parents were members of Philip Doddridge’s congregation in Northampton. He studied first under Stephen Addington (a former student of Doddridge) at Market Harborough, and then in London under Dr. David Jennings’s in Wellclose Square (the same academy that moved to Hoxton in 1762 and became the primary center for educating Unitarian ministers in London for many years). He entered the ministry in 1766 and was ordained in Abraham Rees. For a time in late 1770 he served as an assistant to Thomas Scott in Ipswich before accepting the call in 1773 as minister to the congregation at Mill Hill, in Leeds, where Joseph Priestley had previously ministered. Wood remained at Mill Hill until his death on 1 April 1808. By the time he arrived in Leeds Wood had given up his earlier orthodoxy and Calvinism and become a Unitarian. He was also an accomplished botanist, contributing several articles to Rees’s Cyclopaedia. and became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1791. After the failure of the first application to Parliament for the repeal of the Test Acts on 28 March 1787, a second appeal was set in motion by Dissenters (mostly in London) that came to a vote on 8 May 1789. It too was defeated. Prior to this vote, Wood had become active in the movement, chairing the meeting of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers for the West-Riding of Yorkshire at Leeds on 24 April 1789 and assisting in forming the nationwide association of Dissenters that participated in the third petition in 1790, a petition, like the first two, that was defeated on 2 March 1790, putting an end to such applications until the victorious one of 1828. Besides his activity in the various applications to Parliament for the repeal of the Test Acts, Wood also published Christian Duty of Cultivating a Spirit of Universal Benevolence amidst the Present Unhappy National Hostilities (1781) and two sermons on the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Following the resignation of George Walker, Wood was instrumental in the removal of the Manchester Academy to York where the academy was led by the local Unitarian minister, Charles Wellbeloved.

In Wellbeloved’s Memoirs of Wood (1809), he notes that Wood became involved with the repeal movement in 1789, marking his beginning point as the meeting of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers for the West-Riding of Yorkshire at Leeds on 24 April 1789 (61-2). Wellbeloved writes, “During two succeeding years, he was indefatigable in the ablest exertions to establish the right of those with whom he was connected, to a perfect immunity from all civil restrictions in their peaceable dissent from the established church, and to assist in wiping away a stain which has too long defaced the character of a nation admired and envied for the freedom of its government. Several excellent papers were composed by him upon this occasion, of which the reply to a letter addressed to the Committee by Mr. Wilberforce, assigning some very extraordinary reasons for his opposition to the repeal (see fol. 38); and a declaration signed by himself, and four other Dissenting Ministers of Leeds, occasioned by the remarks of the Clergy of that parish upon the resolutions passed at a Meeting of Dissenters held at Wakefield, are particularly deserving of remembrance (see fol. 66). He attended in London as secretary with the delegates from the West-[63] Riding of Yorkshire, at the time of the last debate upon the subject in the House of Commons, when Mr. Fox’s motion “having to encounter the full weight of ministerial influence, was consequently negatived by a very great majority.” Upon his return to Yorkshire a Meeting of the Committee of Protestant Dissenters, in the West-Riding of the County, was held, when a very interesting report of what had passed was read by him, the causes of the failure of the applicants were ably stated, and the means of securing success at some future period, were briefly suggested (see fol. 98, which includes quotation in previous sentence). No long time, however, had passed, before the general defection of one denomination of the Dissenters, the strange and gloomy aspect of public affairs, the violence of party spirit, the fears of some, and the misrepresentations of others, forbad all hopes of success, convinced the most strenuous and sanguine advocates of religious liberty, that no exertions, however ably and wisely directed, could avail and determined them to wave their just claims, and to wait till that [64] which they had so often asked in vain, should be restored to them unsolicited. The sentiments, which in common, it is believed, with all his brethren, Mr. Wood at length adopted, he has thus admirably expressed in the sermon preached on occasion of the death of Dr. Priestley. . . . [In this sermon c. 1805 he wrote that] after an interval of fourteen years, there is, I trust, no intelligent Dissenter who does not think on the subject with tranquil indifference. We had misconceived the prevailing spirit of the times. We judged that what did not openly appear, had ceased to exist. We were disappointed of our expectation; but our disappointment has not diminished our attachment to our native land. We are still sensible of her invaluable blessings. We do not [65] quarrel with the great and substantial good she offers to us in common with all her other children, because she adds to it a trifling inconvenience, and has given us a slight affront. We shall, I sincerely hope, never again repeat our request. If a free communication of every secular advantage should be offered to us by a confiding country, it will be received by us with a dignified complacence, and a cordial return of beneficial kindness. But we should forget what is due to ourselves, were we to discover any anxious solicitude, and to sue a fourth time for what, weighed in opposition to our legal rights, is less than the small dust of the balance. [62-65]

The final document in Wood’s bound volume is a printed letter entitled “Countrymen and Brethren!” signed “A Christian” (with “W Wood” written in Wood’s hand underneath), from Leeds. The letter denounces the war with France and was obviously distributed in Leeds by Wood and probably published in various newspapers as well. It is dated January 1794 and though the repeal efforts had failed, Wood still retains his outspoken opposition to the Pitt administrations designs against France. At this point, though defeated in his efforts to effect a repeal of the Test Acts, he had not yet relinquished completely his involvement in political issues.

For more on Wood, see Charles Wellbeloved, Memoirs of the life and writings of the late Rev. W. Wood, F.L.S. and minister of the protestant dissenting chapel at Mill-Hill, in Leeds, to which are subjoined, an address, delivered at his interment, on Tuesday, April 5; a sermon, on occasion of his death, preached on Sunday, April 10, 1808 (London: J. Johnson, 1809);  T. W. Davis, ed., Committees for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts: minutes, 1786–90 and 1827–8, London Record Society, 14 (1978), 49–50, 52; Clive D. Field, “Sources for the Study of Protestant Nonconformity in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 71.2 (1989), 103-39, especially p. 115; The Guide to Special Collections, Rylands Library, pp. 62-63; and Extracts from Books and other small Pieces in favour of Religious Liberty and the Rights of Dissenters, nos. 1-2 (Birmingham: J. Thompson, and sold by J. Johnson, London, 1789-90).

Timothy Whelan