Women Preachers in The Bible Christian Connexion

Women Preachers in the Bible Christian Connexion
Author(s): Jennifer M. Lloyd

Source: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn,
2004), pp. 451-481
Published by: North American Conference on British Studies
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Women Preachers in the Bible Christian Connexion*
Jennifer M Lloyd
In 1862 Mary O'Bryan Thome, daughter of the founder of the Bible Christian
Connexion and a Bible Christian local preacher, wrote in her diary: "At our
East Street anniversary I spoke at 11, and Serena [her daughter] at 2:30 and
6; one was converted in the evening."1 She regarded this as a routine engage-
ment; something she had been doing since her sixteenth year, and that her daugh-
ter had every right to continue. Female traveling preachers (itinerants) were
important, perhaps crucial, in establishing the Bible Christians as a separate
denomination and their use was never formally abandoned.2 The persistence of
this tradition makes their history an important case study of women preachers'
experience in nineteenth-century Britain, showing a trend toward marginalization
similar to the experience of many other nineteenth-century women who sought
to enter increasingly professionalized occupations open only to men.3 Even in
the early years of the Connexion when the organizational structure was fluid
and evolving, women were never on an equal footing with male preachers. With
the development of a formal organization in the 1830s their numbers started to
drop and the gap between male and female responsibilities widened, with women
never assigned the full duties of male ministry. By the 1870s there were no
woman itinerants and most Bible Christian women who felt called to preach
I would like to thank Joan Mills for sharing her work on female Bible Christian itinerants; the
Rev. Keith Parsons for copies of his transcription of Lois Thome's diary and his biography of her;
George Potter for arranging to have Serena Thorne's diary, owned by the Uniting Churches of South
Australia, photocopied; librarians at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, particularly
Gareth Lloyd, the Royal Institution, Cornwall, and Shebbear School; Connie Gates, Tom Lloyd,
and Jane Ellis for research assistance. Some of the research for this article was funded by SUNY
College at Brockport and United University Professions.
'Mary O'Bryan Thorne Diary, Jan.14, 1862 (Shaw Collection, Royal Institution Library, Truro, Corn-
wall).
2For the history of women in the Connexion before 1850 see Deborah Valenze, Prophetic Sons and
Daughters (Princeton, 1985) and David Shorney, "'Women May Preach but Men Must Govern':
Gender Roles in the Growth and Development of the Bible Christian Denomination," in Gender
and Christian Religion: Studies in Church History 8 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 309-22.
3For the exclusion of women from the medical and legal professions, see Mary Poovey, Uneven
Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Nineteenth-Century England (Chicago, 1988),
pp. 40-50; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English
Middle Class (Chicago, 1987), pp. 260-65; Martha Vicinus, Independent Women (Chicago, 1985),
pp. 27-30.
Albion 36, 3 (Fall 2004):451-481 c North American Conference on British Studies 2005. All Rights Reserved.
452 Jennifer M Lloyd
did so locally without pay. By then there were new opportunities open to the
more adventurous, and some became professional evangelists or missionaries,
often expected to appeal to or work with other women. Perhaps to take advantage
of this group's experience, and uniquely among the Methodist sects, in the 1890s
the Bible Christians again recruited women itinerants. One woman succeeded
in making a career within the Connexion's formal organization before losing
her position in 1907 when the Bible Christians combined with the Free Meth-
odists and the New Connexion to form the United Methodist Church.
The Bible Christian Connexion was neither the first nor the only Protestant
sect to allow women to preach.4 Protestant Christianity, with its emphasis on
individual revelation and salvation, always contained the potential for members
of marginalized groups to bear witness to their personal experience in public
and to claim that in doing so they were attempting to save the souls of others.
Women preached in public in the seventeenth-century Interregnum, most notably
among the Quakers, but also in more ephemeral sects. In the early days of
eighteenth-century Wesleyan Methodism women like Mary Bosanquet and Sarah
Crosby had preached with Wesley's cautious approval, although he did not think
they should travel and preferred to see their talents used in the more domestic
class meeting.6 After Wesley's death, as Methodist leadership became more
professional and turned more conservative, women's sphere of action was se-
verely restricted. In 1803 the annual Methodist conference limited women who
had "an extraordinary call to preach" to addressing "only other women, only in
her home circuit or by written invitation from the head of another circuit, and
only after gaining the approval of both her superintendent and the quarterly
meeting."7 Similarly, Quaker women of the second generation and beyond gen-
erally spoke only to other women in women's meetings.
Yet principles central to the Evangelical revival associated with Wesleyan
Methodism made it more difficult for Wesleyans than Old Dissenters to deny
4"Connexion" was used by Methodist sects to emphasize their organizational separation from but
doctrinal connection with Wesleyan Methodism. "Bible Christian" referred to the Connexion's per-
ceived greater emphasis on biblical authority. They were also called Bryanites or Free Willers. See
Thomas Shaw, The Bible Christians 1815-1907 (London, 1965), p. 22.
5John Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans: Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2002),
p. 6.
6Kent, Wesley and Wesleyans, ch. 4; Valenze, Prophetic Sons, p. 92; Wesley F. Swift, "The Women
Itinerant Preachers of Early Methodism," Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 29 (1953):
76-83.
7Minutes of the Methodist Conferences (London, 1862), p. 187.
8Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley,
1992), pp. 9-11. Women occasionally addressed the Men's Yearly Meeting; see Elizabeth Isichei,
Victorian Quakers (Oxford, 1970), p. 95.
Women Preachers in the Bible Christian Connexion 453
women's right to speak in public. Evangelicals were Arminians, rejecting the
Calvinist doctrine of predestination and insisting on individual free will and the
possibility of redemption for all. Conversion, an acceptance of religion as one's
guiding principle in all aspects of life, was the fundamental religious experience,
and the emphasis was on evangelism-the conversion of others through preach-
ing. A number of people, including men like Zachariah Taft, a Wesleyan Meth-
odist married to a woman preacher, saw no reason why women should not
witness to their conversion in public, and were prepared to argue against the
biblical texts that appeared to forbid it. In 1803, criticizing the Wesleyan rele-
gation of women to private gatherings, Taft made a spirited defense of women's
right to speak in public, and while he remained within Wesleyan Methodism,
the Primitive Methodist Hugh Boume and the Bible Christian William O'Bryan
were able to draw on his arguments to justify their acceptance of women preach-
ing. Maintenance of women's right to preach was not a determining cause for
their secessions from Wesleyan Methodism in either case, but it became a dis-
tinguishing mark of both Connexions.9
The increasing centralization and formality of Wesleyan Methodism and the
ferment of millenarianism during the Napoleonic Wars led to sectarianism within
the denomination, resulting in the secessions of the Independent Methodists
(1796), the Methodist New Connexion (1797), the Primitive Methodists (1812),
and the Bible Christians (1815). 10 Doctrinally none differed substantially from
Wesleyans, and their differences were largely over issues of practice and or-
ganization, often rooted in their founders' personal conflicts with official Meth-
odist authority. In their formative years all sects relied on lay preaching and
made few distinctions between lay people and officially recognized preachers.
Organization was loose, preaching was usually outdoors or in rented or donated
spaces, frequently supporters' homes, and the emphasis was on the conversion
of souls. They were, to use Deborah Valenze's term, "cottage religions," whose
central religious practices-family prayer, Bible study, class meetings were
located in the home, encouraging women's active participation in spaces iden-
tified with them.11 William O'Bryan, the founder of the Bible Christians, in-
cluded in his account of the Connexion's early days many examples of women
providing space for evangelical preaching, often in defiance of male hostility.
On the very day in 1815 when he had formalized his break from Methodism
by enrolling ten followers in a separate society, a woman invited him to preach
in her sister's house. "Many people attended to hear. I preached in the dwelling
9Zachariah Taft, Thoughts on Female Preaching with Extracts from the Writings of Locke, Martin,
etc. (Dover, 1803).
10Kent argues that the "failure to make more generous use of women partly explains why Wesley-
anism had lost its unity by the 1840s (Wesley and Wesleyans, p. 121).
1 Valenze, Prophetic Sons, pp. 10, 22-27.
house. The husband, who was from home when preaching began, was, on his
return, much displeased that he could not get into his own house, it being so
full, and would permit us to come there no more: but the Lord provided us
another house in the same village, and also applied the word to many hearts."12
Under these conditions some women were emboldened to speak in public, often
on an uncontrollable impulse. Two women connected with the early Bible Chris-
tians, Johanna Brooks and Mary Thorne, both created a stir in their parish
churches by speaking out about their conversion experiences, and in Brooks's
case her husband and a parish officer had her physically removed for daring to
speak in public.13
William O'Bryan was raised in the atmosphere of cottage religion; his parents
regularly invited itinerant Methodist preachers to stay in their Cornish farmhouse
and hold prayer meetings for the family and other local people. He was well
educated and while young managed the tin mining concessions and farm prop-
erty he inherited from his father. He felt called to the ministry, but resisted until
the death of his young son and his own recovery from illness convinced him
he could ignore it no longer. Barred from itineracy because he was married with
children, he began as a local preacher, but his insistence on undertaking evan-
gelical journeys in North Cornwall and Devon where there was little or no
Methodist preaching twice led to his expulsion from his Cornish Methodist cir-
cuit. After attracting large crowds and establishing a relatively firm basis of
support in rural North Devon, in 1815 he officially established his own inde-
pendent circuit around the hamlet of Shebbear. This became the Bible Christian
heartland, although the sect's greatest numbers and support came from Cornish
mining areas.
By 1816, after a year of independent existence, the Bible Christians had 600
members, organized into a single circuit based on Shebbear, and two itinerant
preachers, O'Bryan himself, and Mary Thorne's son James, who was to dedicate
his entire life to the Connexion. By 1819, the year of the first annual conference,
there were twelve circuits with over 2,000 members, and thirty itinerants. Four-
teen, almost half, of these traveling preachers were women, a considerably larger
proportion than among the Primitive Methodists; at their first conference in 1820
they had forty- eight male itinerants and six female, a ratio of one to seven.14
Attitudes towards women speaking in public varied among the Methodist
sects. The New Connexion's policy echoed the Wesleyan: "females, while in-
12William O'Bryan, "The Rise and Progress of the Connexion of People Called the Arminian Bible
Christians," Arminian Magazine (Aug. 1823): 256-57.
13F. W. Bourne, The Centenary Life of James Thorne (London, 1895), pp. 178-79.
14E. Dorothy Graham, "Chosen by God: The Female Itinerants of Early Primitive Methodism"
(D.Phil. Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1986), p. 33; Julia Stewart Werner, The Primitive Meth-
odist Connexion: Its Background and Early History (Madison, 1984), p. 142.
vited to be useful in leading classes, visiting the afflicted, teaching the young,
and exhibiting lovely examVles of domestic piety, are not introduced into stations
of authority and publicity." 5 Only the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Chris-
tians allowed woman itinerants, but among the considerably more numerous
Primitive Methodists women were always a small proportion of the total number.
The millenarian "prophetesses" like Johanna Southcott (born in South Devon,
fairly close to the Bible Christian heartland) had emboldened other women, and
initially both Hugh Bourne's and William O'Bryan's acceptance of female
preaching was circumstantial, making effective use of women who were already
attracting audiences.16 Their willingness to retain them may possibly have been
because of difficulties in recruiting men in rural areas where they could not
leave their farms; not an important issue for the predominantly urban New Con-
nexion, but vital to the Bible Christians. William O'Bryan had another incentive;
confining women to speaking in private situations would be denying his wife
Catherine Cowlin O'Bryan's call to speak in public. A pious young woman,
Catherine had a conversion experience at age nineteen that made her so zealous
that her parents complained of "so much of religion," and her father threatened
to cut off his support. After years of maintaining her husband's farm and
mining interests and raising her family while he pursued his evangelism, she
became an active helper in her husband's independent ministry, taking charge
of female converts. In 1814, while accompanying a male preacher, she was
embarrassed because her companion felt unable to speak before a large congre-
gation. She "felt the spirit moving her thereto, yielded to the call, being con-
strained to speak;.and she, and the people, soon were in tears together..It being
such a strange thing, for a woman to preach, the people became very anxious
about it, so that she was well received where she went, and the Lord blessed
His word by her." Although her husband was at first unsure about encouraging
her, his doubts were removed when he slipped in unnoticed to hear her speak
and became convinced of her call. She began to take her husband's place to
speak at local meetings when he was away and "multitudes flocked to her, and
many were greatly profited."'8 She quickly became an essential member of the
preaching team; her husband reported: "Hitherto places for preaching that had
increased, were in the neighbourhood of my circuit, so that with the help of a
15David Barker, A Catechism of the Methodist New Connexion, Shewing the Origin of that Com-
munity, with the Great Principles on Which It Is Founded (London & Ashton-under-Lyne, 1834),
p. 37.
16Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class
(Berkeley, 1995), pp. 107-1 1.
17"mThe Experience of Catherine Cowlin," last volume of William O'Bryan's diary, John Rylands
Library, pp. 4, 6.
18"'Rise and Progress," Arninian Magazine (Apr. 1923): 113-14, (Sept. 1824): 296.
few local preachers, and my wife, I was able to supply them."19 In a letter to
her daughter Mary in 1818 she described her "time filled up with filling in on
circuits."20 Later, while in her forties, she worked very successfully as an itin-
erant in the Isle of Wight, causing her husband to write to her daughter, "It was
forcibly applied to my mind how highly I was favored. I, my wife, & daug2hter,
3 of the family at the same time laboring for the Lord. What an honor!" I In
her funeral sermnon in 1860 Catherine's grandson credited her with probably
doing "more than can now be fairly estimated in breaking down the prejudice
against female preachers."22
Initially, William O'Bryan regarded his wife's call as exceptional and did not
deliberately recruit women. Women like Johanna Brooks and Mary Thorne
preached locally without formal appointments; according to F. W. Bourne, the
Connexion's official historian, "Mr. O'Bryan scrupled at first to put their names
on the plan, and the idea of their becoming travelling preachers had not occurred
to anyone."23 His gradual acceptance of female itinerants came as he realized
their advantages. In 1816 Elizabeth Dart, a former Wesleyan, had considerable
success in attracting converts around Shebbear. James Moxley, later a Bible
Christian itinerant, described how his father went out of curiosity to hear her
preach and converted with three of his children.24 In the summer of 1817 eight
Bible Christian women attracted large crowds when they preached at a large
open-air meeting; in 1818 Mary Thorne made an evangelical journey into Corn-
wall, and several women were traveling as "helpers."25 It was the women's
success in bringing in converts, "owned by God for his messengers, in turning
many from the error of their ways," that changed O'Bryan's mind. The novelty
of a woman preacher usually attracted a large audience, increasing the oppor-
tunity for conversions. Female preachers appealed powerfully to other women
and were less vulnerable to arrest during the unrest in the years immediately
after the Napoleonic Wars when authorities mistrusted large meetings and itin-
erant preachers were often reputed to be Jacobins.26 Moreover, many female
19"'Rise and Progress," Arminian Magazine (Oct. 1823): 330.
20Catherine O'Bryan to Mary O'Bryan Sept. 24, 1818, John Rylands Library: Court Collection MS
92.5.
21William O'Bryan to Mary O'Bryan Sept. 9, 1823, Court Collection MS 92.7.
22Samuel Thome, William O'Bryan, Founder of the Bible Christians (Plymouth, 1888), p. 80.
23F. W. Boume, The Bible Christians: Their Origin and History (London, 1905), p. 413.
24Ibid., p. 413.
25Ibid., p. 413; Shomey, "Women May Preach," pp. 314-15.
26Valenze, Prophetic Sons, pp. 136-37; J. H. B. Andrews, "The Rise of the Bible Christians," Trans-
actions of the Devon Association 96 (1964), p. 179.
evangelists were young, attracting attention for their precocity. We do not know
the ages of most women who began itineracy before 1829, but at least nine
were under twenty-three, and three were in their teens.27 They were so essential
to the Bible Christian cause that the first Connexional conference in 1819 u-
nanimously approved the use of women preachers and men and women served
together in almost all circuits. At the meeting O'Bryan preached a sermon
justifying female preaching which he later had printed for sale in both England
and the United States.29
Officially sanctioned and judged acceptable in God's eyes, women preachers
were "the shock troops of the Bible Christian advance," the first to go to the
Scilly and Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight, and Northumberland.30 They were
equally successful among West Country farmers-the Weare Circuit in Somer-
set, which had 212 members by 1826, was largely the creation of Elizabeth
Courtice.31 An 1826 poster for a London chapel opening made it clear that the
attraction of a woman preacher was primarily her sex. It identified the male
preacher by name, then added, "It is also expected that A FEMALE will address
the congregation in the afternoon and evening." Catherine Reed, the first Bible
Christian of either sex to preach in London, once addressed four hundred people
in the Connexion's room on Tabernacle Walk. Hearing her speak in Kent, her
future husband James Thorne reported, "She preached such an admirable dis-
course as astonished me... .A doctor said, as I am informed, that God must send
her else she could not possibly have done as she had."33 Women were also
essential to the missions in the ports and naval towns of Plymouth, Portsmouth,
Bristol, Woolwich, and Chatham.34 By 1823 O'Bryan estimated that there were
27In a sample of 28 female preachers (not confined to Bible Christians) between 1827 and 1841,
11 of 28 (39%) first preached in their teens and 6 more in their early twenties (Valenze, Prophetic
Sons, p. 114).
28Bourne, Bible Christians, p. 81; Minutes of the Conferences of the Bible Christian Connexion
(Mill Pleasant, 1819).
29"A Discourse in Vindication of the Gospel Being Published by Females," Arminian Magazine 2,
12 (Dec. 1823): 405-25. While O'Bryan's defense was similar to those of Zachariah Taft and Hugh
Bourne, with which he was probably familiar (Werner, Primitive Methodist Connexion, p. 21), he
did not deal with two texts (I Cor.i.27 and Acts.ii.18) that Valenze (Prophetic Sons, p. 97) points
out have gender connotations, referring to women as weaker vessels and slaves. It is possible
O'Bryan did not wish to alienate his wife or Mary Thorne with such analogies.
30Shomey, "Women May Preach," p. 316.
31Joan Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts on Female Preachers?" (unpublished MS.), p. 19.
32Richard Pyke, The Golden Chain (London, n.d.), opposite p. 46.
33John Thorne, James Thorne of Shebbear, A Memoir: compiledfrom his diary and letters, By his
son (London, 1873), p. 144.
34Bourne, Bible Christians, p. 112.
more than one hundred Bible Christian women who spoke in public.35 Eliza
Jew reported from the Isle of Wight that "Some want to know if we have any
men in the connexion, for they say it is altogether a woman's cause."36 On
arrival as an evangelist in the Channel Islands in 1823 Mary Ann Werrey wrote:
I hear that the general echo is, a Bryanite missionary is come, and it is a female.
I feel a hope that I shall not have to go from door to door, to tell my errand for
it is spreading about very fast: many are enquring, "Who is it?" And "What is
her creed?" Some approve, and others disapprove. The people are much like the
nations of old, that feared when the Israelites drew nigh. The whole town appears
to be in a confusion about the woman missionary.37
Two years later she traveled to Edinburgh, where the Edinburgh Evening Courier
described "the novel and ridiculous exhibition" of a woman preaching, drawing
such a large audience that part of one galler in the Caledonian Theatre collapsed
and the police had to disperse the crowd.
William and Catherine O'Bryan's daughter Mary was sent to accompany Em
Cottle in Cornwall when she was ten and traveled with her father to preach in
London in 1823, soon after her sixteenth birthday. Shortly afterwards she began
to travel alone in Kent, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Wight, before retiring
to local preaching two years later on her marriage to Samuel Thorne. Her diary
is an invaluable record of the life of a young woman itinerant. It was a grueling
existence, constant travel on foot, usually alone, through all weathers, often
uncertain where she was to sleep, forever at work to keep the converted from
backsliding, leading classes in small houses and speaking in the open air to
indifferent or hostile crowds-once she had eggs thrown at her while praying
in public. Crowd hostility like the egg-throwing incident was probably fairly
common and seems to have been directed more at women than at men. On the
Isle of Wight musicians interrupted Eliza Jew's preaching with "a hideous roar,
and danced about wildly, producing great confusion; but the friends bore all the
annoyance and insults with patience." The disruption was only when she was
speaking; her companion Francis Metherall was heard in relative calm.40 While
preaching in the Channel Islands Mary O'Bryan noted there was a petition to
the Governor to expel her "because I make the people mad," and Mary Toms
wrote, "A parson threatens to turn me out of the Island, for I am turning the
35Arminian Magazine (Dec. 1823): 423.
36Arminian Magazine (Mar. 1828): 112-13.
37Arminian Magazine (June 1823): 213.
38Colin C. Short, "The Bible Christians in Scotland," Proceedings of the Wesleyan Historical Society
48 (Oct. 1991): 91-92.
39Mary O'Bryan diary, July 10, 1823
people crazy," but in neither case was the threat realized.41 There is no record
of any woman being taken into custodk while a number of Bible Christian men
were arrested for preaching in public.
Women preachers spoke extempore, and their exact words have not been re-
corded. Their mission was to convert, and to make people fear the alternative.
Ann Cory "caught the note, perhaps, of John the Baptist rather than that of his
Master. She could so appeal to the people as even to strike terror into their
hearts."43 From the Isle of Wight Mary Toms wrote:
Though it was wind and rain, rain, I borrowed a chair and went into the street,
and sung "Come ye sinners poor and wretched," &c. It was not long before some
scores assembled, coming from every part of town; some laughing, some talking,
&c. but I spoke on, and had not proceeded far, when the tears began to flow
from my eyes and many beside.4
A detailed account of female preaching survives in an anonymous account of
"The Female Field Preacher" published in the Arminian Magazine for 1824.45
The author described "a young female," apparently about twenty-two or twenty-
three years of age, who was "supplicating Almighty God with considerable en-
ergy and propriety of language, for all sorts and conditions of men, from the
King upon his throne to the meanest subject in his dominions." She then sang
a hymn, and delivered a sermon on the text "And all flesh shall see the salvation
of God" (Luke 111:6), showing considerable biblical knowledge and fluency. Her
observer concluded that: "The auditory was not numerous, but it was atten-
tive .... The preacher appeared very earnest; she delivered her observations without
hesitation,-indeed with great fluency; with distinct enunciation, and, generally,
in very correct language."46 Yet the speaker's outward poise may have masked
inner misgivings. Catherine O'Bryan began a poem "My Pulpit Feelings":
I've wondered greatly when I've seen / The great attention there hath been /
When I with fear and trembling too / The pulpit fill'd my work to do. / If all
there knew my real state / No doubt some pity twould create.47
Her daughter Mary was never certain of her call and frequently expressed almost
debilitating self doubt. "Oh how little I enjoy, how little I strive! How can it
41Mary O'Bryan diary, Dec. 7, 1823; Pyke, Golden Chain, p. 56.
42Boume, Bible Christians, pp. 78, 112, 115; Pyke, Golden Chain, ch.8.
43Pyke, Golden Chain, p. 45.
44Arninian Magazine (Sept. 1823): 323-24.
46Arminian Magazine (August 1824): 281-86.
47Catherine O'Bryan, "My Pulpit Feelings," linesl-6, transcription, Shaw Collection, Royal Cornwall
Institution.
be possible that God employ me in the work of the Ministry? I am almost lost
when I see how little I have myself & yet that I attempt to teach others."48
While some women were unsure of their role, others were willing to challenge
male authority within the Connexion. In 1825 William Mason complained from
Northumberland that Mary Ann Werrey "refused to take a plan or...be directed
by him, even only once a week, though she often spoke in public.. .when and
where she pleased" and Ann Cory was censored for criticizing O'Bryan at the
1828 conference. 4 The boldest challenger was Ann Mason who in 1819 debated
with O'Bryan and James Thome over the scriptural validity of the sacraments
and the doctrine of entire sanctification, claiming that individuals could attain
perfection in a single moment (a belief that later drew her to the Quakers),
rather than the doctrine favored by O'Bryan that sin is gradually purged away
to achieve sanctification.50 She believed that individuals received instructions
directly from heaven, which led her to question O'Bryan's authority in the Con-
nexion earlier than the male preachers. She doubted her circuit appointments
were divinely appointed and when assigned to London acted with increasing
independence. In 1821 she began questioning whether the sacraments were gos-
pel ordinances, and in 1824 she married her fellow preacher Henry Freeman
without conference approval and both left the Connexion to go on a mission to
Ireland.51
Female itinerants challenged commonly accepted gender norms, but later
descriptions of Bible Christian women preachers were at pains to emphasize
their femininity and gentility. At a time when the tradition of woman itinerants
was fading the author of an anonymous article on "Our Connexional History"
in the 1865 Bible Christian Magazine wrote:
A great portion of the good effected in our early history is due to the Female
Preachers. They were of a superior class; not bold unfeminine women, impelled
by interested motives, and influenced by irrepressible desire for notoriety and ex-
citement. Many of them were reared in tender and comfortable homes, and were
endowed with graces of mind and person that rendered them independent of mer-
cenary motives. 2
We know very little about the home circumstances of the majority of early
female preachers; most were probably like Ann Mason, daughters of small farm-
48Mary O'Bryan diary, Apr. 13, 1824.
49Shomey, "Women May Preach," pp. 318-19.
50Rev. A. Burnside, "The Bible Christians in Canada 1832-1884" (DT diss., Toronto Graduate School
of Theological Studies, 1969), p. 284.
51Ann Freeman, A Memoir of the Life and Ministry of Ann Freeman, A Faithful Servant of Jesus
Christ and an Account of Her Death by Her Husband Henry Freeman (London, 1826), pp. 21,
24-25, 36, 60, 71.
52Bible Christian Magazine (Nov. 1865): 490.
ers whose parents struggled to get by on twenty to fifty pounds a year.53 How-
ever, as the writer suggested, a number of Bible Christian woman itinerants did
not conform to the stereotype of the early nineteenth-century female
preacher-the lower class, uneducated Ranter. The Bible Christians attracted
the support of several larger farmers like the Thornes who aspired to the type
of religious leadership exercised by landowning squires in the Church of England
and who became patrons and supporters of Bible Christian chapels.55 Betsy and
Catherine Reed, Em Cottle, Elizabeth Courtice, and Hannah Pearce all came
from yeoman farming families. Mary Hewitt's father was a prosperous Quaker
gentleman-farmer.56 Many of the women seem to have had an adequate educa-
tion; O'Bryan was accused of educating his daughters "above their station," and
Mary had instruction in drawing and French. A reviewer of her biography
described her as "a very fluent speaker; her knowledge of Bible truth was deep
and extensive; she was well read in history; had a rather wide acquaintance with
men and things; and laid the affairs of every-day life under contribution to
illustrate and enforce spiritual and eternal realities."58 Letters from women
preachers printed in Bible Christian publications are grammatical and literate,
but this may be misleading since they were almost certainly edited.
In the early years there were few differences between the duties of women
and men. While O'Bryan was an autocratic leader, he allowed lay participation
in governance and did not require formal ordination of ministers, both conditions
potentially favorable to women's participation. Women were welcome to take
on responsibility within their local societies (chapel memberships). Many were
class leaders with responsibility to watch over participants' spiritual health and
issue tickets to the Lord's Supper.59 They were vital to Connexional fundraising,
organizing sales, bazaars, teas, and collecting contributions.60 The first recorded
minutes for the Chatham circuit (1824) listed ten collectors, half of them
53Valenze, Prophetic Sons, p. 141.
5401ive Anderson, "Women Preachers in Mid-Victorian Britain: Some Reflexions on Feminism, Popu-
lar Religion, and Social Change," Historical Journal 12, 3 (1969): 469.
55John Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (2d. ed.; St. Austell, 1993), p. 247.
56Boume, Bible Christians, pp. 38, 347; Lois Deacon, So I Went My Way: William Mason and His
Wife Mary (London, 1951), pp. 24, 30.
57S. L. Thorne, A Funeral Sermon Occasioned by the Death of Mrs. Catherine O'Bryan, Wife of
Mr. William O'Bryan, Founder of the Bible Christians (Shebbear, 1860), p. 23.
58Bible Christian Magazine (Apr. 1890): 212.
59Dale A. Johnson, ed. Women in English Religion 1700-1925 (New York, 1983), p. 63.
60L. Wilson, "Constrained by Zeal: Women in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Nonconformist Churches,"
Journal of Religious History 23 (June, 1999): 193-96.
women.61 Women served as unpaid local preachers and as paid itinerants. In
1819 Elizabeth Gay was the single itinerant in charge of the Dock circuit, al-
though this was an exceptional appointment, not repeated for nearly a century.62
O'Bryan was willing to entertain the idea that women could administer the
Lord's Supper, a relatively rare celebration, although there is no evidence that
they actually did so; baptism, a much more frequent ritual, they delayed until
a male itinerant arrived. 3 When Mary O'Bryan asked her father whether and
how often she could celebrate the Lord's supper when she was preaching in the
Isle of Wight he replied, "Women have souls as well as men. As often as you
can make it convenient & the people do without hesitation. I doubt not Jesus
will be there and that will be better than all the bishops in England."64
Not all established societies were willing to embrace women preachers.
O'Bryan's concern that women should not take on sacramental duties unless
the congregation was accepting was echoed in an 1824 letter from Northum-
berland:
Should you determine on sending a preacher, perhaps a male might be most suc-
cessful, now that Mary Ann [Werrey] hath prepared the way. The people here (at
least some of them) consider it anti-scriptural for a woman to preach; conse-
quently this objection would be taken away by a male coming,-at the same time
I think it providential that Mary Ann came first, because she hath excited some
enquiry which a male might not have done.65
Women's role was to attract a congregation; it took men to consolidate their
achievement. As the Connexion developed a formal organization it became clear
that if women could preach, they could not govern. Catherine O'Bryan expressed
the general belief when she wrote from the Isle of Wight in 1823 that Mary
Toms was "better fitt to preach than to regulate the affairs of the circuit."
Henry Freeman, Ann Mason's husband, encapsulated the emerging policy: "Rul-
ing in the church and preaching are distinct, so a person may be a preacher and
61Lewis Court, extracts from Chatham Circuit Book, Court Collection MS 91.5. In 1820 Grace
Barrett was traveling and preaching without pay and lent William O'Bryan ?50 to help build chapels
(Bourne, James Thorne, p. 145).
62.Bourne, Bible Christians, p. 81; Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," p. 11.
63Shomey, "Women May Preach," p. 320.
64William O'Bryan to Mary O'Bryan July 9, 1824, Court Collection MS. 91.15. Mary never recorded
any such celebration in her diary. Graham identifies one instance of a female Primitive Methodist
administering the Lord's Supper, but none of baptism ("Chosen by God," pp. 98, 104).
65Arminian Magazine (Dec. 1826): 399-400. When William Mason arrived shortly afterward, he
agreed that Mary Ann Werrey should be relieved, but he wrote, "If the woman was to be taken
away and not another sent, I believe many would not attend at all who now do....I must desire to
have a female of a strong constitution" (Arminian Magazine, [Feb. 1827]: 37).
66Catherine O'Bryan to Mary O'Bryan, June 10, 1823, Cornwall Public Record Office X241/4.
not a ruler."67 The exclusion of women from governance was formalized in the
Connexion's 1838 Rules and Regulations: "We believe that God, in certain in-
stances, calls women, as well as men, to publish salvation to their fellow-sin-
ners... They do not, however, take part among us in church Aovernment: they
are entitled to attend meetings for business but not to vote." Their lesser re-
sponsibilities were reflected in their earnings. In 1819 single men's quarterage
was fixed at 3 with additional allowances for a wife and children, women's at
half that amount.69 Initially, women were not included in the preachers' super-
annuation (sickness and retirement) fund set up in 1820; the 1825 conference
allowed them to subscribe half the amount subscribed by men.70
Women were also subject to male scrutiny. O'Bryan insisted on deference,
decorum, and domestication. "Our sisters who travel as helpers should keep
their own place, be watchful, always neat, plain and clean, discreet, humble,
brave as mothers in Israel, diligent according to their sex as well as their breth-
ren, being as much as they can their own servants and helps to families wherever
they go and when they leave their room in the morning leave everything in its
proper place." At the 1825 conference the men indulged in considerable discus-
sion of suitable female dress. Mary O'Bryan, who had already been reproved
by her father after a report that she had been wearing "a beaver bonnet with a
broad band & clothes plain but too fine," was highly indignant, calling it "over-
heated unreasonable zeal..Those Batchelors (sic) are endeavouring to lord it over
us tyrannically dictating even the colour of our garments (what husband could
do more) and even having public discussions about our very petticoats."71
Despite Mary O'Bryan's private sentiments, there is no evidence of women
protesting their unequal pay or aspiring to greater responsibility within the Con-
nexion. Probabl' the majority accepted their subordinate status as both natural
and divine will. 2 The lack of protest suggests it is unlikely their subordination
was a major factor in the high turnover among female preachers. Between 1819
and 1829 fifty-four women began preaching but forty-two (78%) left, a net gain
of twelve.73 In contrast, over the same period ninety men became preachers and
67Henry Freeman, False Prophets Described, and Thoughts on the Call, Appointment, and Support
of Ministers, also on Worship and a Vindication of the Ministry of Women (Dublin, 1824), p. 27.
68A Digest of the Rules, Regulations, and Usages of the People Denominated Bible Christians (De-
von, 1838), p. 11.
69Pyke, Golden Chain, p. 61. The 1837 allowances were more generous but equally unequal.
70Minutes, 1820, pp. 7, 16; ibid., 1825, p. 8.
71Minutes, 1820, p. 10; Mary O'Bryan diary, Nov. 13, 1824, Aug. 15, 1825.
72Graham, "Chosen by God," pp. 271, 287.
73Half the women who joined the Primitive Methodist itineracy between 1824 and 1828 had left
by 1828 (Graham, "Chosen by God," p. 82).
thirty-six (40%) left, still a high rate of attrition but a net gain of fifty-four.74
Women's average length of service before 1829 was three and a half years,
men's five and a half. Men who began in the early days were far more likely
to have long careers. Twenty-three men (25%) who began preaching before
1830 but only two women in the entire history of the Connection served as
itinerant for twenty years or more.75
There is some evidence that women were less able or willing to withstand
the strains of traveling. Over the period of ten years between 1819 and 1829
fifteen women were listed as supernumeraries-unable to work but paid a small
stipend-while only five men were superannuated over the same period. A
number wore themselves out or succumbed to illness. Margaret Adams died of
scrofula aged twenty-three, Ann Cory's health broke down twice in an eight-year
ministry, and Ann Mason, never in good health, died two years after her break
with the Bible Christians on her marriage.76 Mary O'Bryan complained of head-
aches and fatigue, and wrote in her diary, "It seems more as tho' I were sure
of not being able to travel about another Winter as I did the last-sometimes I
think it is not required of Females or their bodies would be more calculated for
it."77
However, different gender expectations were probably the most important fac-
tor in women's short periods of service. The average length of service for women
between 1819 and 1907 was under five years and the modal number was three.78
Preaching for a few years fitted well into the norms for young rural women
who expected to work as servants, companions, housekeepers, or apprentices
before they married in their early to mid-twenties and took on domestic duties.79
Mary O'Bryan pointed out the relative freedom of young women, writing "My
Mother and others have taught me that single Females have only to please the
Lord-but those who are married [have to please] their husbands." Although
the O'Bryan daughters were better educated than most rural women, their parents
74Statistics from Mills "What Are Our Thoughts," and 0. Beckerlegge, United Methodist Ministers
and Their Circuits (London, 1968). Possibly, some men preached for only one or two years trying
to avoid "going on the parish" at a time of high unemployment. See J. Munsey Turner, "Primitive
Methodism from Mow Cop to Peake's Commentary," in From Mow Cop to Peake, 1807-1932
(Wesley Historical Society, Yorkshire Branch, 1982), p. 4.
75Beckerlegge, United Methodist Ministers, passim; Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," pp. 28-29.
76Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," pp. 8, 18, 40-41.
77Mary O'Bryan diary, Aug. 10, 1825.
78Beckerlegge, United Methodist Ministers, passim.
79Mary Jo Maynes and Ann Waltner, "Women's Life-Cycle Transitions in A World-Historical Per-
spective," Journal of Women's History 12, 4 (Winter 2001):13; Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling
Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780 (Berkeley, 1996), p. 81.
expected them to work before marriage; all their younger daughters served ap-
prenticeships or opened ephemeral schools. When the eighteen-year-old Mary
told her parents that she intended to leave itineracy after only two years to marry
Samuel Thome, her mother was appalled that she should give up itineracy so
early, writing to her that Samuel was willing to wait seven to ten years.8
Probably most young Bible Christian women saw their itineracy as an inter-
lude not a career. While in the Isle of Wight Mary O'Bryan occasionally con-
templated a life given to God's service but found it hard to envisage what it
might be other than an early death: "I think I will not endeavour to ease myself
at all but labour on till I die in the Work-supposing it will shorten my days
& feeling willing to be speedingly removed hence to my heavenly home." She
saw marriage to Samuel Thome as a way of leaving a life she found increasingly
intolerable, asking herself whether "sharing the joys and sorrows of life
with-and enduring the caprice of one individual" could be much worse than
enduring the criticisms of other male preachers, and decided that Samuel, whom
she had earlier discouraged, was the better option.81 Twenty-one female itiner-
ants married between 1819 and 1833. Once married they were expected to retire
from traveling although most continued as unpaid local preachers. Bible Chris-
tian policy towards preachers marrying was somewhat inconsistent during
O'Bryan's pre-eminence. Mary O'Bryan Thorne believed her father, like Wesley
before him, preferred his traveling preachers to be celibate: "If he had not been
a married man himself I think he would have tried to carry it out among his
preachers. He often deplored having married my Mother," since otherwise he
might have been able to continue with the Methodists. 82 An important reason
for his opposition to married itinerants was expense; in most cases the infant
denomination could not afford to pay a couple's living expenses. Mary O'Bryan
Thome cited the case of Edmund Wame, who gave up his farm to join the
ministry. Married and with children, as his family increased he aroused
O'Bryan's hostility and was told "to leave the ministry and go away" as his
family was too burdensome. He remained in the Connexion only because his
circuit refused to allow his dismissal.83 Yet at the Connexion's second confer-
ence in 1820 male preachers were encouraged to marry female itinerants and
thirteen did so before 1833. It is unlikely that this was an attempt to domes-
80William O'Bryan diary, Oct. 8, 1825; Mary O'Bryan diary, Aug. 15, 1825.
81Mary O'Bryan diary, Aug. 7, 1825, Aug. 15, 1825.
82Mary O'Bryan Thome diary, Jan. 17, 1865. We have no record of what Catherine O'Bryan thought
of his regrets, which he reiterated throughout his life, but in old age when they moved between
their daughters' households in Manhattan and Brooklyn she usually moved on when her husband
arrived.
83Valenze, Prophetic Sons, p. 59; Mary O'Bryan Thorne diary, Jan. 17, 1865.
84Minutes, 1820, p. 7.
ticate the women and confine them to their home circuits since their ability to
draw crowds was crucial and their greatest successes yet to come. More likely
the young male preachers themselves were trying to establish acceptable grounds
for marriage; in 1823 James Thorne told Andrew Cory that he "was for...mar-
rying, provided it was done scripturally and rationally."85 But preachers marry-
ing preachers brought trouble in Cory's circuit when two he could ill afford to
86
lose resigned over some resentment over a mamage. As a result, in 1823 all
preachers who wished to marry were told they had first to get the consent of
the conference.87 They quickly found that permission did not mean support.
Two months later James Thorne married the itinerant Catherine Reed with the
Conference's consent, but O'Bryan ordered the circuit stewards in London where
they were appointed to provide no housing or spousal support. Catherine was
forced to work throughout her pregnanc8y to earn her preacher's salary, then got
nothing from the superannuation fund. This must have fueled Thorne's resent-
ment of O'Bryan's highhandedness.
Resentment against O'Bryan was growing, with James Thorne at its head.
Despite his own inability to adhere to rules laid down by his superiors, O'Bryan
was relentlessly paternalist, requiring total obedience to his will, claiming the
right to veto any policy and insisting on his authority to assign preachers to
circuits, sign chapel deeds, and control Connexional finances. One of his preach-
ers remembered that "the government of the Connexion was a kind of absolute
or despotic monarchy in the hands of Mr. O'Bryan, who had said, 'I have the
right to say to any preacher, Your labours are no longer needed; as I have not
specified how long a preacher shall labour with me, approved or not ap-
proved.'...Thus, as to my itinerant life, I was in jeopardy every hour."89 In
contrast, the majority of the preachers, including Thorne, wanted a more demo-
cratic governance similar to the other Methodist sects, "a perfect equality of the
brotherhood" with authority vested in the annual conference. Other causes of
dissension included concern over mounting debts, O'Bryan's personal extrava-
gance, and his arbitrary assignments to preaching circuits In 1828, after an ac-
rimonious exchange at a preliminary meeting, O'Bryan resigned the presidency
at the annual conference and a year later refused all attempts at compromise
and stormed out of the Connexion altogether, an event known as the disruption
of 1829. After a brief attempt at establishing a separate denomination he emi-
85Boume, James Thorne, p. 186.
86The resentment may have been against William Lyle and Mary Ann Soper, who married on June
16, 1823 and disappeared shortly afterwards (Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," p. 57).
87Minutes, 1820, p. 7; (1823), p. 8; Shaw, Bible Christians, p. 27.
88Mary O'Bryan Thome diary, Jan. 17, 1865.
89"Memoir of R. Sewell," Bible Christian Magazine (Feb. 1853): 55.
grated to the United States in 1833 with all his family except Mary, who, when
forced to choose between her father and her husband, sided with the Thornes.0
While the disruption was a crucial event in Bible Christian history, beginning
James Thome's long ascendancy in Connexional affairs and initially causing a
crisis of confidence and financial difficulties, it is not clear whether it initiated
or merely accelerated a decline in the numbers and support of women preach-
ing.
Preachers desisting 1819-30
12
10
8 OWomen
6I
4 Me
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Figure 192
Figure 1 shows a decline in the number of both men and women preachers,
beginning in 1828 and growing over the period of the disruption (1829-3 1).
Fifteen women and eighteen men "desisted" (resigned) between 1827 and 1830,
a major loss to the Connexion. At the 1830 conference preachers' salaries were
cut and there were references to "a depressed state" of Connexional affairs.
Ministering to and retaining the converted became as important as gaining new
converts, es.ecially as competition with Primitive and Free Methodists increased
after 1850. Connexional leaders were forced to concentrate on maintaining
ground rather than expansion, thus restricting opportunities for female evangel-
ism.94 The evolution of the Connexion from cottage religion to formalized de-
90He returned six times over the next thirty years, and eventually received an annual pension of
?20 from the Connexion.
91The number of Primitive Methodist female itinerants increased between 1828 and 1832, possibly
the result of a crisis in Primitive Methodist finances. Preachers were paid by local circuits (Bible
Christian preachers were paid by the Conference), so women were less expensive and therefore
attractive to cash-poor circuits (Graham, "Chosen by God," pp. 11, 80-81).
92Statistics from Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," and Beckerlegge, United Methodist Ministers.
93Roger Thorne, "The Last Bible Christians," Transactions of the Devon Association 107 (1975),
p. 50.
94Valenze identifies chapel building and numerical growth as the main indicators of institutionali-
zation (Prophetic Sons, pp. 274-81).
nomination accelerated with O'Bryan's departure. As outdoor evangelism di-
minished and worship was increasingly conducted in chapels the use of women
as "shock troops" shaxply decreased. Although many of the male preachers were
married to former female itinerants and the 1838 Rules and Regulations stated
that God "in certain circumstances, calls women, as well as men, to publish
salvation to their fellow-sinners," the proportion of female to male licensed
preachers steadily dropped from its peak in 1828 (Figure 2), and after a slight
increase in overall numbers of women in the 1830s a steady decline began in
the 1840s (Figure 3).95
Women Preachers as a Percentage of All Preachers
1819-1844
60
40
20
19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43
Figure 2
Active Women Preachers 1817-1850
30
25
20
15
10
1719 2123 2527 2931 3335 3739 4143 4547 49
Figure 3
95Shorney, "Women May Preach." p 319.
In formal denominations, as the Bible Christians became in the 1830s, the
distinction between preaching and ruling, between evangelism and ministry, be-
came increasingly important in defining women's roles. The number of woman
itinerants was allowed to decline and by the 1870s the only paid women in
Bible Christian pulpits were evangelists, engaged for temporary missions or
revivals. An 1830 circular requesting lay financial help described a ministry of
educated males working within a defined constituent body: "a race of men in
the church, whose business is to further the spiritual progress of the whole."96
When Samuel and Mary Thorne opened a school in Shebbear in 1833 they
enrolled thirty-six boys and nineteen girls, but six years later when shareholders
took over with the intention of establishing it as the Connexional school where
adult men could also study for the ministry, girls were excluded.97 The Con-
nexion's leaders endorsed women's right to speak but did not appoint them to
minister, which included responsibilities for discipline, planning, and budgeting.
As the ministry became more professional women's access decreased. They
could not attend the Connexional school, were required to live on salaries even
more inadequate than the men's, and had no wives to take on the many auxiliary
circuit duties, let alone run their households. Female itinerants appointed to
circuit plans were auxiliaries to male circuit preachers, their duties predominantly
ministering to women in domestic settings. Dorothy Graham suggests that
Primitive Methodist female itinerants were more likely to be assigned to the
less prestigious, very rural circuits, especially in the 1840s.99 There is no evi-
dence to support a similar experience for Bible Christian women preachers.
Thirty-four percent of the assignments of three women with careers of ten years
or more starting in the 1830s were in more urban circuits, somewhat more than
the assignments (30%) for a sample of twenty-four long-serving men active in
the 1830s and 1840s.
External factors also contributed to a decline in the numbers of women inter-
ested in taking on the rigors of itinerant preaching. The accelerated pace of
industrialization in mid-century Britain brought changing economic and social
conditions. As domestic industry and the household economy declined rural
women increasingly moved into agricultural wage labor. Villages lost popula-
tion, removing some of the spaces for cottage religion. The age of marriage for
women, which had been rising in the second quarter of the century, began to
96"To the circuit stewards, society stewards, class-leaders and principal friends, who feel interested
in the establishment and spiritual welfare of the Bible Christian Connexion" (Shebbear, 1830), United
Church Archives, Victoria University, Toronto.
97"History of the Bible Christian College, Shebbear," Bible Christian Magazine (Nov. 1891): 668-69.
98Burnside, "Bible Christians in Canada," p. 25.
99Statistics from Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," and Beckerlegge, United Methodist Ministers;
Graham, "Chosen by God," p. 259.
drop after 1850, reducing the time young women spent before settling to do-
mesticity. ?0 Agricultural depression in the "hungry forties" and improvements
in transportation both encouraged and pushed young women from rural areas.
Low-paid, unskilled agricultural work for women became increasingly seasonal
and they migrated to cities to find steady work. 101 Meanwhile, as popular unrest
diminished in mid-century, sectarian outdoor preaching lost some of its subver-
sive appeal in rural areas. ? Emigration also reduced the number of potential
female recruits, and especially affected the farming and mining communities
where the Bible Christians were strongest. Between 1850 and 1865 the average
number of Bible Christians emigrating each year was just under 290.103 Nine
of twenty-four long-serving male preachers emigrated, and seven of Mary and
Samuel Thome's children tried emigration, five of them permanently.
Yet, the decline in women itinerants after 1829 did not mean that women
disappeared from Bible Christian pulpits. From the beginning substantial num-
bers of women were local preachers. It is impossible to reconstruct the number
of women local preachers over the period of the denomination's existence, but
it is likely that of the 1,069 local preachers in 1843 a respectable proportion
were women. Many itinerants began by preaching locally. Martha Hutchings
moved from local preaching to two years as a paid itinerant in the Scilly Isles
before marrying the local lighthouse keeper.104 At least thirteen former itinerants
continued to preach locally after they married; probably the great majority did
so. Ann Vicary continued her ministry after marriage to Paul Robins, often
taking her baby to church and handing it to a member of the congregation for
the duration of the service. Mary O'Bryan Thorne's tombstone records her sixty
years of Bible Christian ministry and her diary contains many examples of in-
vitations to preach beyond her local plan. In 1864 she spoke on the anniversary
of Stonehouse chapel in Plymouth: "I felt myself very unequal to it, but our
friends thought they must have a female to speak once, and as they could not
get any other they almost compelled me."105 Catherine Reed Thome was a full
partner in her husband James's ministry, including supervising the boys at Sheb-
bear school as Matron for more than twenty years. After her death a speaker
described her as equal but different: "I do not think she was second to her
?00Michael Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality (Oxford, 1995), pp. 50-51.
'01Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (Oxford, 1995), pp. 182, 185.
102Valenze, Prophetic Sons, p. 281.
103 Michael J. L. Wickes, The West Country Preachers (privately published, 1987), p. 56.
104Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," pp. 35-36. Martha Hutchings was Mrs. Mills' great-great-
grandmother.
105Mary O'Bryan Thorne diary, Jan. 12, 1864.
husband. For strength of character, for patient but indomitable courage, for true
womanly instinct and tact, there were but few who were her equals... .Mr. Thome
could never have accomplished what he did if he had not an intelligent wife in
full sympathy with his work."106 Ann White preached locally for nine years,
then spent a further thirteen as an itinerant before marrying James Roberts, a
Bible Christian Minister, in her early forties and emigrating with him to South
Australia, where she continued to preach.107
The Roberts worked in one of a number of Bible Christian missions estab-
lished in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to minister to emigrants, mostly
Comish miners or Devon farmers, whose denominational adherence was as much
nostalgic as doctrinal. The Bible Christian Missionary Society "for the purpose
of sending Missionaries into the dark and destitute parts of the United Kingdom,
and other countries as Divine Providence might open the way" was set up at
the second conference in 1820.108 For more than ten years the meager funds
were concentrated within Britain, but their lack of overseas missions made the
Bible Christians feel inferior to the Methodists and other evangelical sects-the
Primitive Methodists sent their first missionary to Canada in 1829.109 Therefore,
although the missionary fund was in debt, in 1831 they eagerly responded to
requests from former Bible Christians in Canada to send out two preachers.
However, while women had been the shock troops of the home missions, foreign
missionaries and preachers in colonial circuits were male. The preachers were
sent out at the request of existing groups or individuals who expected a man
whose pastoral duties would take precedence over evangelical work. The Rev.
A. Burnside describes the Bible Christians in Canada as a socio-religious group
for whom religious affiliation was essential for group identity.110 For Devon
and Cornish emigrants the Bible Christian preacher was a link to the homes
they had left, and converting others was less important than ministering to ex-
isting congregations. Their frame of reference was conservative; they expected
a father figure. In 1848 Paul Robins wrote from Canada, "There appears to be
a prejudice against female preaching."11
Yet, as at home, women were essential to colonial Bible Christian ministries.
Although the communities that requested preachers generally preferred them to
be unmarried since they were less expensive to support, they were dependent
106The James Thorne Centenary: A Souvenir (London, 1895), pp. 63, 71.
107Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," pp. 35, 68, 70.
108Shaw, Bible Christians, p. 33.
109Ibid., p. 41
110Bumside, "Bible Christians in Canada," p. 236.
IIIBible Christian Magazine (Mar. 1848): 123.
on whoever volunteered to serve.112 If missionaries did not take wives with
them they usually married early in their tour of duty. The Canadian Observer,
the Bible Christian newspaper, advised ministers' wives in 1869 that they should
be "earnest workers in the Lord's vineyard. If you have no small children, or
bodily infirmities to prevent, you should have a class in the school, and you
should visit the sick and the distressed, without distinction or partiality. Work,
work, sisters while it is called today." 113 Some of the most effective women
preachers in England became missionary wives, preaching locally while provid-
ing the other services expected of preachers' wives. In Canada Elizabeth Dart
maintained her reputation as an outstanding speaker and shared much of her
husband's work. In the 1880s Elizabeth Hoskin so overcame the prejudice
against women preachers in Upper Canada that in Huntingdon she was known
as Rev. Mrs. Hoskin, "being the first preacher of the Bible Christians in this
section of the country, by the divine blessing on her labours, she planted our
society in this place." 5 In the same decade, when there is no record of women
preaching in eastern Canada, Mrs. Ann Gordon, formerly Ann Copp, was well
known as a preacher and temperance and suffrage worker in Manitoba.16 In
Queensland, Australia, Serena Thorne made such an impression that a member
of the government later told her husband that if she had been made superinten-
dent "she would have had Bible Christian circuits in every part of Queens-
land." 117
At home, prejudice against women preaching grew as a new generation of
men with no experience of the Connexion's early days began their careers. Itin-
erants concentrated mainly on ministry to established congregations, leaving few
opportunities for women except as auxiliaries in large circuits. In the 1850s
there were only two active female paid itinerants and by the 1860s a looming
crisis in Connexional membership and finances caused its leaders to try to ne-
gotiate a merger with the larger New Connexion whose main strength was in
northern cities-three quarters of Bible Christian membership was concentrated
in the West of England.118 In 1863 James Thorne began negotiations for union
and his sister-in-law Mary O'Bryan Thorne heard that "the help of women.is
to be entirely dispensed with," since the New Connexion did not allow women
112Bumside, "Bible Christians in Canada," p. 183.
113Observer, Aug. 18, 1869, quoted in Burnside, "Bible Christians in Canada," p. 373.
114Burnside, "Bible Christians in Canada," pp. 103-4.
'15Observer, Mar. 15, 1882, quoted in Burnside, "Bible Christians in Canada," p. 372.
116Burnside, "Bible Christians in Canada," p. 373.
117Octavius Lake, obituary of Serena Lake pasted into the last page of her diary.
11tShaw, Bible Christians, pp. 57-58.
to preach.119 This appears to have had the support of the younger generation
of Bible Christian ministers now moving into leadership positions. When at the
1869 conference the resignation of the only active woman itinerant was an-
nounced, the solidly male delegates cheered, and in a report on the New Con-
nexion negotiations "it was stated to the Committee that this usage female
preaching] was gradually passing away, there being now only one female itin-
erant among the Bible Christians [the retired Catherine Harris]."120 Mary
Thorne's daughter Serena, an evangelist in South Australia, heard about the
cheers in a letter from her fiance Octavius Lake, who had been at the Conference
and told her that he "rejoice[d] that the practice is receiving such discontinuance
that only in special cases it can find support." Serena was so disgusted she
briefly broke off the engagement until Octavius convinced her that he had been
ill when he wrote and "he would never oppose or hinder" her. 12 However,
much to James Thorne's regret, the New Connexion rejected union.122 By de-
fault female preaching was not condemned, but the practice of employing paid
woman itinerants quietly lapsed. In 1874 the annual Conference Minutes no
longer listed Catherine Harris as a supernumerary (retired), although she prob-
ably continued to draw her pension until her death in 1896. For the next sixteen
years no women were recorded as receiving stipends.123
Serena Thorne, like her mother, began preaching locally in her teens, when
"the knowledge of her coming to take a service always meant overflowing con-
gregations."M Although her impoverished parents briefly apprenticed her to a
trade, she abandoned it for a preaching career.125 In the early 1860s she can
have seen no opportunity for advancement among the Bible Christians and she
seems never to have contemplated a career as an itinerant; by mid-century there
were other more attractive opportunities for effective women preachers. In her
nineteenth year she began traveling in Bible Christian circuits in Cornwall, De-
9Ibid., p. 74; Mary O'Bryan Thome diary, Mar.8, 1869.
120The Conference Minutes do not record the cheering, but see Serena Thome diary, Nov. 24, 1870;
Bible Christian Magazine (Dec. 1869): 542. The last Primitive Methodist woman itinerant retired
in 1862 (E. Dorothy Graham, Chosen by God: A List of the Female Travelling Preachers of Early
Primitive Methodism [Bunbury, 1989], p. 7).
121Serena Thome diary, Nov. 24, 1870, Nov. 28, 1870.
122Shaw, Bible Christians, p. 74; Minutes 1870, Resolution IV.1.29.
123Oliver 0. Beckerlegge, "Women Itinerant Preachers," Proceedings of the Wesley Histprical So-
ciety 30 (1955-56): 182.
124Mary O'Bryan Thome diary, July 22, 1860, Jan. 26, 1861; Obituary of Mrs. Octavius Lake,
Bible Christian Magazine (Sept. 1902): 421.
125Mary Thome diary, July 31, 1857, Jan. 26, 1861.
von, and South Wales as an evangelist, paid to preach for short periods with
the intention of saving souls and raising money for local congregations.126
By the 1850s the main vehicle for conversion was the revival, a period of
concentrated preaching with the specific intention of renewing religious fervor
among established congregations, bringing back backsliders, and attracting new
converts. In the 1860s a widespread interdenominational revival associated with
the American evangelist Charles Grandison Finney's visits to Britain in the
1850s spread through Britain. At least forty women preachers were associated
with the revival, mostly independent of any denomination, young, middle class,
and initially unmarried. 7 Many were able to earn a living speaking at local
revivals, chapel anniversaries, and missionary services, and some had their own
chapels. As in the 1820s, female preaching was a novelty that attracted large
audiences and female evangelists were effective at fundraising and converting
souls, although they differed from the women preachers in the early days of the
sects in that they were predominantly middle-class, in most cases well-educated,
and rarely if ever spoke outdoors. 12 Such women appear from time to time in
the "Religious Intelligence" section of the Bible Christian Magazine, probably
the majority of them independents whose services were engaged by local circuits,
sometimes in conjunction with other Methodist sects. In the second half of the
1860s Miss Potter of Exeter preached on at least twelve Bible Christian circuits
spread across the south of England from Cornwall to Kent. A correspondent
commented, "Miss Potter is admirably adapted for preaching, and is deservedly
esteemed for her works' sake." 129 In 1893 an event at Chepstow was almost
too successful:
In the evening we had one of the most remarkable missionary meetings I have
ever attended. Miss Oram was announced to speak and sing, consequently there
was a rush for the chapel quite an hour before it was time to begin the meeting.
Immediately the door was open the chapel was full, still the people pushed in un-
til every foot of standing room was taken up; the windows, rostrum, stairs, table,
every imaginable place was occupied, still they pushed until the people were so
wedged in that we could hardly breathe. I never saw a place so packed. And then
there was a crowd outside the door pushing to get near enough to hear. A convey-
ance drawn up by the hedge across the road was full of people trying to look in
over the heads of the crowd. Miss Oram spoke effectively and well. The financial
result would no doubt have been better if the collection could have been properly
made, which was out of the question. As it was, it was most encouraging, being
nearly five times as much as it was last year.130
126Obituary of Serena Lake pasted into the end of her diary.
127Anderson, "Women Preachers," p. 480.
128Anderson, "Women Preachers," pp. 469-72.
129Bible Christian Magazine (Mar. 1865): 139; (Mar. 1868): 142; (June 1868): 281.
130Ibid. (Apr. 1893): 238.
Serena Thorne's career illustrates the possibilities open to adventurous women
in the second half of the century. Perhaps still seeking wider opportunities for
her talent, in 1863 she emigrated to Queensland, Australia, with two brothers
and a sister. Almost immediately she was in demand as a preacher and when
she was taken ill with scarlet fever in 1864 there were public prayers for her
recovery. By the following year she was able to give up "all secular employment
and give herself wholly to the Lord's work," at that time working for the Primi-
tive Methodists. When she received a letter from the home Missionary Com-
mittee asking her "to render all the assistance she could" in opening a Bible
Christian mission in Queensland she was willing to end her association with
the Primitive Methodists, but while the home Committee "rejoiced to hear that
the most eloquent female preacher of their acquaintance was then in Brisbane
and ready to join in giving the mission a good start," they considered her a
junior partner, holding the fort until the missionary, Mr. Woolcock, arrived.131
Woolcock probably resented Serena's successful record and knowledge of the
terrain and soon after his arrival tensions arose. According to her mother, Wool-
cock treated Serena "in so coarse and ungentlemanly manner that she has re-
quested a removal to some other colony." She moved to Melbourne, Victoria,
where she was an immediate sensation, then to South Australia where she was
equally successful. She took the Adelaide Town Hall, capacity 1,500, for three
weeks. "On every occasion hundreds are unable to obtain admission. The audi-
ence is composed of all classes merchants, bankers, lawyers, shopkeepers, and
working people-who hang upon her lips with breathless attention." Her success
continued on a smaller scale in rural circuits; on one occasion she attracted 500
to a meeting at Gawler, enabling them to pay off the chapel debt.132 There she
resumed acquaintance with Octavius Lake, whom she had known when he was
a student at Shebbear College, and they married in 1871. Her mother's hope
that she would not "bury her talent and become useless" was realized; despite
frequent pregnancies Serena continued to be the leading woman preacher in
South Australia, preaching in every town in the colony. In 1892, as President
of the South Australian Bible Christian Women's Missionary Board, she was
instrumental in the appointment of two women evangelists to preach on rural
circuits, the first of several.133 Her career also illustrates the opportunities for
women to speak in public in the temperance and suffrage movements; she was
a leader in both movements until her death in 1902.134
131Mary O'Bryan Thome diary, July 22, 1860; Apr. 23, 1862; June 7, 1863; Mar. 20, 1864; Oct.
25, 1865; Boume, Bible Christians, p. 432.
132Bible Christian Magazine (Sept. 1870): 434; (Feb. 1871): 88-89.
133AAmold D. Hunt, The Bible Christians in South Australia (South Australia, 1983), p. 34.
134Mary O'Bryan Thorne diary, Apr. 3, 1868; June 4, 1871; Hunt, Bible Christians in South Australia,
p. 34.
Yet, Serena's career also demonstrates the limitations of female evangelism.
As Olive Anderson has pointed out, women like Serena were regarded as having
"an exceptional call given in special circumstances to a few rather than sanc-
tioning the many," therefore not opening the way for women in the official
ministry.135 Serena's own husband regarded her call as exceptional and she had
to defend her right to speak against vocal and newspaper attacks.136 Evangelism
was an uncertain occupation, dependent on short-term contracts and proven suc-
cess, very different from the assured income of a circuit preacher. According
to contemporary reports, Serena's prime attraction was her femininity. Unlike
reports of male preaching that concentrated on content rather than delivery, Bible
Christian Magazine accounts of Serena's meetings emphasize her womanly
qualities:
The young lady displayed none of that masculine manner that might have been an-
ticipated from one of the fair sex placing herself in so prominent a posi-
tion....[T]he fair ministress read, in a peculiarly distinct and impressive man-
ner....She then offered up a most pure and simple, but affecting prayer.preaching
a really eloquent extempore sermon, in a nicely modulated voice,...-the dis-
course being of a truly Christian character, delivered unostentatiously, without the
least hesitation-the words flowing from her lips with a marvellous rapidity and
precision.137
Shurlee Swain has shown how descriptions of two other successful female evan-
gelists in Australia in the 1880s similarly sought to emphasize womanliness,
quiet demeanor, and the feminine quality of their voices. She suggests that the
writers' aim was to domesticate and control such women's power, and the re-
ports are likely to have been inaccurate. Women like Serena addressed large
mixed crowds, sometimes outdoors; their voices must have carried considerable
distances and their content had to appeal to men as well as women.13
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century an alternative way of focusing
women's religious vocation was in missions to what the Bible Christians called
the "heathen proper," non-Christians in Africa, India, and China. Missionary
work became an acceptable, even suitable profession for women; propagandists
sometimes argued that women's patience and agptitude for languages made them
more suited to missionary work than men. Organizations like the Ladies'
135Anderson, "Women Preachers," p. 478.
136Serena Thome diary, Nov. 24, 1870, Dec. 1, 1870, Dec. 2, 1870.
137Bible Christian Magazine (June 1868): 290-92.
138Shurlee Swain, "In These Days of Female Evangelists and Hallelujah Lasses: Women Preachers
and the Redefinition of Gender Roles in the Churches in Late Nineteenth-Century Australia," Journal
of Religious History 26, 1 (Feb. 2002).
139Susan Thome, "Missionary-Imperial Feminism," in Gendered Missions: Women and Men in Mis-
sionary Discourse and Practice, ed. Mary Taylor Huber and Nancy C. Lutkehaus (Ann Arbor,
1999), p. 47.
Committee of the London Missionary Society emphasized the opportunity to
participate in the imperial enterprise while simultaneously stressing the ladylike
qualities of successful recruits. In 1886 the Bible Christians established their
China Mission in Yunnan Fu. While the first missionaries were male, in 1894
the Conference agreed that female missionaries should be in full standing after
four years' probation, with the right to vote at all official meetings. 14 Between
1894 and 1907 eight women worked as Bible Christian missionaries in China,
mostly with girls in the mission school although one went as a doctor.142 They
were similar to women who went out as missionaries for other denomina-
tions-well educated, and attracted to the exoticism, freedom, and adventure of
missionary work in non-western cultures.143 Like the female evangelists in the
pioneer days of the Connexion; they were young, initially unmarried, and most
served for brief periods before marrying their fellow workers, after which they
continued to serve with their husbands. Their work was more domestic than
evangelists; they rarely spoke in public and worked almost entirely with women
behind the closed doors of their lodgings or missions. Lois Malpas wrote from
Yang Chou, "During the week we only meet the women. When the days are
fine they come in large numbers."144
Lois Malpas Thorne's experience was typical of this generation of woman
missionaries. Her eulogist, careful to emphasize her feminine traits, described
her as "A good speaker of the Chinese colloquial, possessing unwearying pa-
tience with ignorant Chinese women, spending hours in teaching them simple
truths, ever gentle and winsome in manner and speech, carefully avoiding un-
necessarily wounding Chinese prejudices."145 Three years after she arrived in
Yunnan Fu she married Mary O'Bryan Thorne's grandson Samuel Thomas
Thorne and worked with him to establish the mission station at Tungchuan,
146
including preaching in Chinese when Samuel was traveling. . Both suffered
from ill health, and after eighteen months of marriage Samuel died of typhus.
140Jane Haggis, "A Heart that Has Felt the Love of God and Longs for Others to Know It': Con-
ventions of Gender, Tensions of Self and Constructions of Difference in Offering to Be a Lady
Missionary," Women's History Review 7, 2 (1998): 171-92.
41Rules, Regulations, and Usages, (6 ed.; London, 1892), p. 96; Minutes, 1894, p. 53.
142Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," p. 26.
143Rosemary R. Gagan, A Sensitive Independence: Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Can-
ada and the Orient, 1881-1925 (Montreal, 1992), pp. 20, 89.
144 China's Millions: The Monthly Magazine of the China Inland Mission, 1886, p. 62, quoted in
R. Keith Parsons, My Moving Tent: A Biographical Sketch of Lois Anna Thorne (privately published,
1985), p. 5.
145Minutes, 1905, p. 55.
146Parsons, Aty Moving Tent, p. 7.
Broken-hearted but determined to continue, Lois returned on leave to England
where she helped found the Bible Christian Women's Missionary League; her
appearances at missionary meetings dressed in Chinese clothes aroused consid-
erable interest.147 She retumed to China in 1894, but had to leave during the
Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and ill health ended her missionary career. She con-
tinued her evangelism in Britain, participating in the Welsh Pentecostal Revival
in Cardiff in 1904, but died of an illness contracted in China soon after. Her
obituarist wrote, "A holy quiet fell upon our Annual meeting when news
came...that Mrs. Thorne had entered the Royal presence of the Lord. Upon whom
shall her mantle fall?" 148
In 1904 there were still candidates for Lois Thorne's mantle. After a twenty-
year lapse a small revival of female itineracy had begun in 1890 when Eliza
Giles was appointed on trial to the Scilly station. In 1894, the year she com-
pleted her probation, the President of Conference projected fifty years into the
future, imagining a woman presiding over the annual meeting. Three more
women, Lillie Edwards, Lily Oram, and Annie Carkeek, were admitted on pro-
bation; and a series of resolutions passed regulating the reception of women
candidates, and defining their position, work and remuneration. 50 Women can-
didates for the ministry had to pursue the same course of reading and take the
same examinations as men.151
There is no recorded reason for this significant change of heart. Possibly the
availability of female candidates, already seasoned local preachers or evangelists,
at a time when many itinerants recruited in the 1 860s were retiring was a factor;
recruitment of men also increased at this time. A more likely explanation is that
the Connexion was attempting to match other Methodist denominations' efforts
to channel women's religious call into institutes for deaconesses whose work
was both pastoral and evangelical, sometimes including preaching. The Protes-
tant deaconess movement originated in Germany and spread to England when
Elizabeth Ferard founded the London Diocesan Deaconess Institute in 1861.152
Methodists were slow to follow the established church, but the first Wesleyan
Deaconess House opened in 1890, and the United Methodist Free Churches
147Bible Christian Magazine (Oct. 1892): 630.
148Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," pp. 60-64.
149Beckerlegge, "Women Itinerant Preachers," p. 182.
150Bible Christian Magazine (Sept. 1894): 556-57.
151Minutes, 1894, pp. 4647.
152For deaconesses see Catherine M. Prelinger, Charity, Challenge and Change: Religious Dimen-
sions of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Women's Movement in Germany (New York, 1987); Vicinus,
Independent Women, ch. 2.
founded theirs in 1891. 153 Such foundations were beyond the means of the Bible
Christians and reviving female itineracy may have seemed a way to make use
of women's energy while placing them in circuits where, like deaconesses, their
roles would be primarily pastoral and subordinate. An interview with Lily Oram,
already a successful evangelist, shows that she saw her role in such terms. When
asked what a woman would bring to the ministry, she emphasized women's
special talents and needs:
A woman has more sympathy, and especially among women could do more than
a man could..I look on my work as a matter of personal dealing with people in
their homes. Conversation with young girls is an important part of my work..Of
course, a woman must always remain a woman. It would be a sad thing if in tak-
ing up the work of the ministry she should lose her womanly instincts and sympa-
thies. I don't like to see a woman putting on the masculine immediately she
does that she ceases to be useful. But I do think a woman might be a successful
minister. 154
Whatever the reasons for the revival of female itineracy, it had little success.
Women's opportunities were still limited to subordinate or marginal postings,
and while the 1894 Conference had discussed "the admission of women into
elders' and other legislative and administrative courts of the Church," no action
was taken.155 The Conference could not find Annie Carkeek a station, suggesting
local resistance to woman itinerants, and Eliza Giles worked alone on the small
Dalwood circuit "under the general oversight of Br. Daniel." 156 After only a
year Lily Oram resigned. Probably she found evangelism paid better. Female
evangelists' pay was ?3. 7s. 6d. per mission, allowing a woman fully employed
throughout the year to earn approximately ?45; an independent evangelist could
probably do better. Oram served her probation in London, where ?18 a year
plus board and lodging could not have gone far.158 Carkeek also returned to
her previous employment as an evangelist and Giles left after two years, leaving
Lillie Edwards as the sole remaining candidate for itineracy.159
Women evangelists also lost ground to men. In 1891 Eva Costin began a
ten-year career as the Bible Christians' first full-time paid woman evangelist,
153See E. Dorothy Graham, Saved to Serve: The Story of the Wesley Deaconess Order 1890-1978
(Peterborough, 2002); Henry Smith, Ministering Women: The Story of the Work of the Sisters Con-
nected with the United Methodist Deaconess Institute (London, n.d). The Primitive Methodists es-
tablished their Sisters of the People in 1901 (Graham, Saved to Serve, p. 462).
54Bible Christian Magazine (Sept. 1894): 571-72.
Ibid. (Sept. 1894): 556-57.
156Minutes, 1897, p. 16.
157Ibid., 1895. Not all pages in the minutes were numbered..
'58Ibid., 1898. A male evangelist earned approximately ?5 a month more than a woman.
159Ibid., 1895; 1897; Mills, "What Are Our Thoughts," p. 26.
480 JenniferM Lloyd
preaching at fund-raisers and revivals, attracting contributions and converts. Her
salary was guaranteed but her local expenses had to be met through collections
and subscriptions.160 But in 1900 the Conference initiated the ambitious New
Century Movement, aiming to convert 100,000 souls and raise ?100,000. Raising
such an endowment was a task too important to be left to women; they hired
a full-time male evangelist, initially to work with Costin, with Annie Carkeek
recommended for employment at the expense of local circuits. By 1901 neither
Costin nor Carkeek were listed as evangelists, and in 1902 both official evan-
gelists were men. 16 Women were being squeezed out of what they did best.
For Eva Costin it was a double disappointment. She had resigned from evan-
gelism in 1895, hoping to go to China, but was not accepted because of her
age and health, and her "evangelistic usefulness in the Home work."162
By 1901 Lillie Edwards was the only woman paid a Connexional stipend. In
the next six years she proved that a woman could be trusted with almost all the
duties of ministry, although she always worked in marginal positions and never
supervised male itinerants. She spent her probationary years in Sevenoaks, a
small mission where she was the only itinerant, working under the District Su-
perintendent's supervision. In 1895 he reported that she was "doing splendid
work;.. .she possesses great business and preaching ability."163 In her third year
examination in 1897 she "excelled several of the young men of the same year
in some subjects and two of them in the total," but when she was received into
full connexion she did not stand on the Conference platform with the male
candidates. Her subsequent postings were challenging. She went first to St.
Mawes, the ninth smallest circuit in the Connexion, with one itinerant, five local
preachers, three chapels and seventy-three full members. She managed to reduce
the debt and stayed for a fifth year before being transferred to the similarly
sized Hastings mission, where her superior reported, "The decline of past years
has been arrested, financial difficulties have been adjusted, and the whole mis-
sion placed in working order. Best of all, several conversions have been wit-
nessed. The Missionary receipts have been considerably increased, and the Quar-
ter Board is clear.9"167
But Lillie Edwards's time was running out. In 1901 the Bible Christians began
the negotiations that led to union with the United Methodist Free Churches and
the Methodist New Connexion in 1907. The other denominations in these unions,
larger and better funded than the Bible Christians, did not recognize women
16ORules, Regulations & Usages, 1892, p. 91.
161President's Circular, 1902, p. 9; Minutes, 1903.
162Minutes, 1895, p. 53; Ibid., 1896, President's Circular, p. 10.
163Bible Christian Magazine (Nov. 1895): 698; (June 1896): 497.
164Minutes, 1900; 1904, p.16; Bible Christian Magazine (Sept. 1897): 334.
preachers. In recognition of her "conspicuous ability" and her special preaching
and organizing abilities, Edwards was paid 135, with no further claim on the
Female Preachers' Fund, and allowed to remain in the Hastings Mission as a
special agent for one year.165 In 1908 no one had replaced her and she disap-
peared, althoulh, like the early female itinerants, she probably continued to
preach locally. 66
In 1863, contemplating a possible union with the New Connexion, Mary
O'Bryan Thorne described the Bible Christians' embrace of female preaching
as one of the Connexion's great achievements, since otherwise "my Mother and
Motherinlaw (sic), myself and daughter, with many Christian sisters might have
digged a pit for our talents instead of saving them for the glory of God and the
salvation of a host of souls."167 Over nearly one hundred years by far the ma-
jority of Bible Christians, male and female, heard and accepted women preaching
in their chapels. Female itineracy declined and almost died out as a new gen-
eration of Bible Christian leaders with no experience of the early days of evan-
gelism took over in the second half of the nineteenth century, but the Connexion
never formally abandoned the practice, and seemed more open to it in its final
years as an independent sect. Even after the 1907 union, female preaching,
whether by evangelists, deaconesses, or local preachers, survived.16 In 1932,
when the Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists merged with the United Meth-
odists, the latter two, including former Bible Christians, had 780 fully accredited
local women preachers between them.169 The Bible Christians were an essential
and vital part in the retention of this tradition, and for this alone their history
is worth resurrecting.
Jennifer M. Lloyd is Assistant Professor of History at SUNY College of Brock-
port. Her articles have appeared in Journal of British Studies and Journal of
Women's History.
165Minutes, 1907, p. 6.
166Minutes of the United Methodist Church (London), 1907, p. 90; 1908, p. 62.
167Mary O'Bryan Thome diary, 1/17/65.
168Valenze, Prophetic Sons, pp. 274-81.
169Graham, "Chosen by God," p. 192.

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Women Preachers in the Bible Christian Connexion

Author(s): Jennifer M. Lloyd

important, perhaps crucial, in establishing the Bible Christians as a separate

experience in nineteenth-century Britain, showing a trend toward marginalization

similar to the experience of many other nineteenth-century women who sought

to enter increasingly professionalized occupations open only to men.3 Even in

the development of a formal organization in the 1830s their numbers started to

College at Brockport and United University Professions.

Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Nineteenth-Century England (Chicago, 1988),

more adventurous, and some became professional evangelists or missionaries,

in making a career within the Connexion's formal organization before losing

sect to allow women to preach.4 Protestant Christianity, with its emphasis on

of marginalized groups to bear witness to their personal experience in public

Women preached in public in the seventeenth-century Interregnum, most notably

eighteenth-century Wesleyan Methodism women like Mary Bosanquet and Sarah

class meeting.6 After Wesley's death, as Methodist leadership became more

erally spoke only to other women in women's meetings.

Yet principles central to the Evangelical revival associated with Wesleyan

Thomas Shaw, The Bible Christians 1815-1907 (London, 1965), p. 22.

7Minutes of the Methodist Conferences (London, 1862), p. 187.

8Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley,

Victorian Quakers (Oxford, 1970), p. 95.

women's right to speak in public. Evangelicals were Arminians, rejecting the

possibility of redemption for all. Conversion, an acceptance of religion as one's

and the emphasis was on evangelism-the conversion of others through preach-

gation of women to private gatherings, Taft made a spirited defense of women's

right to speak in public, and while he remained within Wesleyan Methodism,

tinguishing mark of both Connexions.9

The increasing centralization and formality of Wesleyan Methodism and the

ferment of millenarianism during the Napoleonic Wars led to sectarianism within

the denomination, resulting in the secessions of the Independent Methodists

Organization was loose, preaching was usually outdoors or in rented or donated

central religious practices-family prayer, Bible study, class meetings were

located in the home, encouraging women's active participation in spaces iden-

providing space for evangelical preaching, often in defiance of male hostility.

by enrolling ten followers in a separate society, a woman invited him to preach

etc. (Dover, 1803).

1 Valenze, Prophetic Sons, pp. 10, 22-27.

churches by speaking out about their conversion experiences, and in Brooks's

regularly invited itinerant Methodist preachers to stay in their Cornish farmhouse

children, he began as a local preacher, but his insistence on undertaking evan-

Attitudes towards women speaking in public varied among the Methodist

Christians," Arminian Magazine (Aug. 1823): 256-57.

The millenarian "prophetesses" like Johanna Southcott (born in South Devon,

initially both Hugh Bourne's and William O'Bryan's acceptance of female

confining women to speaking in private situations would be denying his wife

Catherine Cowlin O'Bryan's call to speak in public. A pious young woman,

became an active helper in her husband's independent ministry, taking charge

of female converts. In 1814, while accompanying a male preacher, she was

increased, were in the neighbourhood of my circuit, so that with the help of a

(Berkeley, 1995), pp. 107-1 1.

against female preachers."22

preached locally without formal appointments; according to F. W. Bourne, the

to anyone."23 His gradual acceptance of female itinerants came as he realized

their advantages. In 1816 Elizabeth Dart, a former Wesleyan, had considerable

success in attracting converts around Shebbear. James Moxley, later a Bible

success in bringing in converts, "owned by God for his messengers, in turning

of a woman preacher usually attracted a large audience, increasing the oppor-

tunity for conversions. Female preachers appealed powerfully to other women

erant preachers were often reputed to be Jacobins.26 Moreover, many female

19"'Rise and Progress," Arminian Magazine (Oct. 1823): 330.

21William O'Bryan to Mary O'Bryan Sept. 9, 1823, Court Collection MS 92.7.

25Ibid., p. 413; Shomey, "Women May Preach," pp. 314-15.