Grafton Street Baptists, London

Grafton Street Baptist Church, London. The following account is taken from the Church Records for Grafton Street, 1766-1774, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford.

A John Harwood is a member, received on 17 November 1767 (f. 41).  He is the same one who will relocate to Birmingham and be involved in the riot of 1791.  A Rev. Anderson is the pastor, but all is not well in 1765-66 (f. 5-15).  The church eventually decides to withdraw from him (f. 21).   A Mr. Messer is asked to become their minister on 13 October 1766 (f. 35).  They seek his ordination and approach the Board of Ministers about it, and they recommend that Dr. Stennett, Mr. Wallin, and Mr. Reynolds as a committee meet with a committee from Grafton Street to seek answers first to the recent expulsion of Anderson, who apparently has started his own church nearby (f. 52).  In February 1767 the Ministers write to the church, wanting to know if they looked upon Anderson’s new work as a “sister church,” to which the Grafton committee responded with “they look’d upon them as a disorderly People and no Church” (f. 53).  On 9 March 1767 John Martin (not the future pastor) gave his experience and the church agreed to accept him after baptism (f. 55).  The Ministers responded again on 16 March 1767 and informed the church that they could not participate in the ordination of Mr. Messer because they church did not separate “friendly and lovingly from Mr Anderson & his members, and esteem then as a Sister Church” (f. 56).  Messer was ordained by the church on Friday, 3 April 1767, without the assistance of the Board of Ministers (f. 62), and on that same day John Martin, who had been baptized two weeks earlier, was received into the church (f. 63).  Martin is asked to be excluded on 19 September 1768 for defrauding his master (f. 83-83). He was restored on 19 December 1768 (f. 86-87).  In June 1769 another report came before the church of Martin’s continued misconduct and saying bad reports of the church (f. 100).  He was soon excluded from communion.  [After folio 92 the pages are not marked.] An Elizabeth Cole was added to the church on 19 November 1770.  Rev. Messer dies in summer of 1772.  John McGowan preached his funeral sermon and it was published.   A Mr. Wykes preached for the church in August 1772 [William Wykes?].  A Mr. Pitts from Loughwood in Devon was asked to come and preach as a candidate in late 1772.  They also approached a Mr. Davis of Waltham Abbey in May 1773.  John Martin from Sheepshead in Leicestershire first preached in August 1773.  He was asked to preach for six months as a candidate.  He was called at a meeting on 21 February 1774, John Harwood still present.  Harwood must have left sometime shortly after 1775, for he does not show up in the next Church Book which begins in 1777.  In the mid-1780s a John Palmer joins the church and begins signing the minutes.