A printed letter from Richard Bright, to be left at Mr. Woodland’s, at the Charity School in Stoke’s Croft, Bristol, dated 25 May 1789, in which he was commissioned by the Committee of Delegates from the several Congregations of Protestant Dissenters meeting at Lewin’s Mead, Castle Green, Bridge-Street, the Pithay, and Broad-Mead, to send a copy of their Resolutions to the London Committee and the various Committees around the country. 

He notes that they believed it their “duty to use every method in our power to procure the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, which we consider as a reproach to the nation and Church of this Kingdom, as well as to the character of a Protestant Dissenter.  And though we have met with a second repulse in this attempt, we are by no means discouraged from persisting in our efforts to obtain an object so desirable, being fully persuaded that the justice of our cause must ensure it’s final success.  To this end nothing can be more essential than a General Union amongst ourselves and acting in concert; the want of which, in a great measure, has rendered the Body of Protestant Dissenters in this Kingdom far less respectable and powerful than it would otherwise have been.” He was proposing meetings of committees in every county in England for this purpose. 

An earlier meeting had been held on 5 May 1789 at the Charity School in Stokes Croft, Bristol, where it was resolved unanimously “that the whole body of Protestant Dissenters, of the three several denominations throughout the Kingdom, should form themselves into Associations, in such districts as may be deemed most convenient, – in order to the more ready communication of sentiment; and the greater ease of acting unitedly, and effectually, upon every occasion in which the general interests of the Protestant Dissenters are concerned.” The committee resolved to gain the assent of all the Dissenting congregations in Somerset, Glocester, Monmouth and Wiltshire to form associations.

Text: Test Acts Papers, no. 13 (a), Unitarian Collection, UCC 3/6/6, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Richard Bright, at the same time as the movement for repeal was occurring, also attended a meeting of the Planters, Merchants, Manufacturers, and Others, of Bristol on 13 April 1789, concerning the formation of a committee which would prepare petitions against Wilberforce’s proposed bill for the abolition of the slave trade.  See Bonner and Middleton’s Bristol Journal, 18 April 1789, p. 3.