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A Visitor from the United States.—Records of Ministers.—Mr. Spurgeon a Candidate for the Houghton Pastorate.—Anecdotes of Mr. Spurgeon.—Other Spurgeon Incidents.—What Houghton did for Mr. Spurgeon.—Sunday School Incidents.—Churches Amalgamate.—A New Era.—Building of Huntingdon Mill.—Curious Incidents, Then and Now.—Building Trinity Church, Huntingdon.
To resume the religious work. About the year 1850, my father, who wished certain persons to come under religious influence who had not been reached by Mr. Harcourt’s preaching, invited Mr. Finney, of Obertin College, U.S.A., to come to Houghton to conduct revival services, and gave him £100 to pay his expenses. My brother, G. W. Brown, accompanied by Mr. Harcourt, went to meet him at Southampton, and brought him straight to Houghton. Mr. Charles Finney was a remarkable preacher. There was little appeal to the feelings, but his sermons were nearly all logic, and the remarkable thing was that in a sermon, which required attention to follow him, the most educated and the most illiterate would be {61} influenced. He remained about six weeks, and then went to Birmingham, Leamington, and London before his return to America.
Soon after Mr. Finney’s departure, Mr. Harcourt, feeling that his work at Houghton was finished, moved to Luton, in Bedfordshire, and was succeeded in the ministry at Houghton by the Rev. John Hart, a hardheaded Scotchman. During Mr. Harcourt’s ministry a chapel had been built at Hartford, and was opened by the Rev. Mr. Mursell, of Leicester. Another also had been opened at Hemingford Grey by the Rev. Mr. Brock, and, during Mr. Hart’s ministry, Godmanchester Chapel was affiliated to the Houghton Church, as also the Baptist Church at St. Ives, the latter worshipping in the Public Institution. Mr. Hart’s work was not, perhaps, altogether as successful as Mr. Harcourt’s, but he did a good work. Fenstanton was also under Mr. Hart’s guidance.
After about seven years, Mr. Hart left and went to Guildford, in Surrey, and was instrumental in getting a new and handsome church and schoolrooms built, and died as recently as 1895. His work at Guildford continues to flourish under the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Houghton, formerly of Christ Church, near Bournemouth. Mr. Hart, while at Guildford, established a number of village preaching places, the same as at Houghton.
The Houghton religious work fluctuated after Mr. Hart’s departure under various {62} ministers, and for some years now the Rev. Henry Bell, formerly in connection with Mr. Hart’s village work, has been the minister.
When Mr. Harcourt left Houghton, Mr. Spurgeon, who was a very young man, living and preaching at Waterbeach, Cambs., came over to take the services at Houghton on Sunday—I presume, with some little idea, if he were invited by the people, to become the pastor. He was then very self-confident, I might say conceited, and very off-hand in his manner. For example, he informed us in the dining room, when the conversation happened to turn upon the Church of England, that the Bishop had been consecrating a piece of land for burial purposes in Waterbeach. He (Mr. Spurgeon) said he told his congregation on announcing that there would be a baptismal service during the week, that if they chose to attend it they would see him consecrate the Horsepond. I presume the candidates were going to be baptised in the village pond.
My father, when young men came to preach, would, if they were very modest and diffident, say to them after the service, “You did very well this morning; with study and practice, you will make a good preacher,” or words to that effect. If they were over-confident, he would lower their sails. When, after morning service, as soon as they reached the dining room, my father said to Mr. Spurgeon, “Young man, your sermon this morning was not calculated to do the least good”; that came as a wet blanket to him, {63} if, as was very likely, he expected commendation. Everyone who knew Mr. Spurgeon in after years would see how he altered by becoming more modest than in his youth, and how well he bore himself after he arrived to a position of great honour.
At a meeting held at Zion Chapel, Cambridge, Mr. Spurgeon, then a very young man and a tutor, made a speech, which was down upon a number of people, upon which the Rev. James Harcourt said, “Young man, if you dipped your arrows in oil instead of vinegar! I will say to you as David did to the young men, ‘Stay at Jericho until your beard is grown, and then you might speak with some authority.’ ”
Many anecdotes have been told of Mr. Spurgeon, some of which he repudiated, but it must be remembered that an audience who heard eccentric remarks would be much more likely to remember them.
I will now mention two things which Mr. Spurgeon said at a religious service, which I can vouch for, as I heard them myself. Mr. Spurgeon was preaching in a barn at Needingworth, near St. Ives, and had dined at a farmer’s before the afternoon, where he met a Mr. Bull, the leader of the choir. Before giving out the second hymn Mr. Spurgeon said, “I hope this hymn will be sung more melodiously than the other, as anyone would think from the noise you made that you had one of the Bulls of Bashan for your leader.”
On another occasion, preaching in a tent {64} in Needingworth, he stated in his sermon that some young preachers had no idea where to place the accent when reading. Instead of reading the words about the feeding of the five thousand, “they did eat and were filled,” they would read “they did eat and were filled!”
I once met two young men when on the Continent at Como, and they told me they had been stopping at a hotel in ChaivennaChiavenna, and had there got into conversation with a gentleman and asked him, among other things, if he had ever heard Mr. Spurgeon preach, and what he thought of him—in fact, discussed Mr. Spurgeon pretty freely. At last they said the gentleman told them, “Why I am Mr. Spurgeon.” The young man said to me, “He was a jolly fellow; he laughed, and was not a bit offended.”
Once I met Mr. Spurgeon at the stone-laying or the opening of Willingham Chapel, I forget which. I was then limping about on two sticks from the effects of the gout, when Mr. Spurgeon said, “Does it not, my friend, make you very low-spirited? It does me.”
One very good trait in Mr. Spurgeon was that, as long as his strength would allow, he was always willing to go into the small villages to stone-layings or openings of chapels.
I think it was a fact that Mr. Harcourt was partly the cause, indirectly, of Mr. Spurgeon being thought of as the pastor of Park {65} Street Chapel, London. There had been a meeting at Cambridge, at which Mr. Harcourt was present; also Mr. Spurgeon, and a deacon from Park Street. Mr. Harcourt, I believe, in the train the next day, travelling with the deacon to London, referring to Mr. Spurgeon, said: “That is the man to be your pastor. He will make somebody in the time to come.” Mr. Harcourt’s prophesy was more than fulfilled.
For many years, say about 60, a Sunday School has been carried on in Houghton, formerly by the Wesleyans from St. Ives, a good man, named Canham, a master mason, coming over every Sunday until it was taken over, and Mr. Goodman became superintendent. My father succeeded Mr. Goodman, and now I have been a superintendent for many years, and my wife, Susanna Brown, since our marriage in 1848, has had the sole charge of the Infant School in a separate building. She is well qualified for the work, and, under her management, it has always been a great success, and has regularly been a feeder to the other school. She used to have about 40 little pupils until the village decreased in population, and now there are about 25. She educated several generations. The scholars have come from the parents of regular attendants at the Parish Church and from the chapel-goers indiscriminately. It is amusing sometimes when a burly man of middle age is passing to hear her say, “He was one of my infants.”
The older Sunday School at one time, even {66} when there was a Church Sunday School at Houghton, and another at Wyton, contained 200 children, and we have had a good staff of teachers from the villagers themselves. We have always endeavoured to give them good, sound religious instruction, founded upon the teaching derived from the Old and New Testament, and here, again, there has been no religious difficulty. The school now, with no other Sunday School in the two villages, has dwindled down to about 80, owing to the decrease of population. During my father’s life-time, he had a large class, a Bible class of big lads, or young men, and he used to say he could always retain them until they went courting—but he found that competition too much for him. This class was carried on successfully after my father’s death by Mr. Henry Goodman, of St. Ives. His daughter, Miss Ethel Goodman, came from St. Ives every Sunday to teach for some years.
Mrs. Toller, who was an excellent teacher, had also for some years a large Bible class of girls and young women up to her death, in 1894.
In the early times of Sunday School work, in the neighbourhood, in addition to a treat annually for the children, the parents in each village in which a school was in existence, would assemble once a year, having a tea and meeting in a tent afterwards, and at the meeting in the evening the claims of Sunday Schools were advocated, and the parents were impressed with the importance {67} of seeing their children sent regularly to school. The tents would be decorated in the various villages where the meetings were held with flowers and evergreens. Before tea, and between tea and the evening meeting, young ladies and gentlemen would play at various games. On one occasion, at Somersham, an annual meeting and dinner of a local benefit club had been held in a barn which, on the previous day, had been used for the Sunday school meeting, and the decorations and devices remained up. One device was, “Feed My Lambs.” A clergyman, the Rev. Edward Baines, of Bluntisham, remarked that he thought it ought to have been altered to “Feed My Lions,” and, by the way, in those times, compared with now, the men would eat a much more hearty meal.
After Mr. Hart left the services held in the St. Ives Institution ceased, and, on Mr. Holland resigning his position as minister of the Independent Chapel, the Rev. Thomas Lloyd became his successor, and Mr. Thomas Coote, of Fenstanton, with my father, after much negotiating with the old congregation at the Institution and Mr. Lloyd’s late congregation, succeeded in putting the two congregations together. It was not a union of Baptists and Congregationalists, because the Independent trust deed would not allow of that, but the Baptists had to consent to be absorbed, which they would not have done if they had not been too weak in money to carry on any longer a separate Baptist Church. The two churches, since being {68} mixed, have not worked without some friction, but it has proved to be the best thing to have done, all things considered.
From now a new era, in one respect, commenced. Nonconformist Chapels, or Meeting Houses, as they were formerly designated, had to be built to escape too public observation in retired lanes or yards. Such was the case with the Independent and Baptist Chapel at St. Ives, and the Wesleyan and Union Chapel at Huntingdon. The buildings also, partly from the same cause, and partly from principle, and also for cheapness, were either plain or unpretending, if not absolutely ugly. It was now thought that it was expedient to come into a more prominent position, and erect a better style of building. So the church standing on the Market Hill, St. Ives, was built in as commanding a position in the town as possible, and, instead of being called a Meeting House, was named “The Free Church, St. Ives,” to denote it was supported by the free gifts of its worshippers, and not by aid derived from the State. I cannot just now state the sums that were given towards its erection, but I know that Mr. Thomas Coote, of Fenstanton, and my father were considerable donors, and the leading Nonconformist inhabitants of the town were not behind hand, but were liberal contributors.
The clock, with an illuminated dial, was paid for by subscriptions from Church people and Nonconformists, and it is illuminated out of the public funds. The clergyman at {69} the time remarked that it was very nearly a Church Rate. He was the Rev. Mr. Forsbrook.
There were both political and religious reasons, rather than commercial, or in addition to business ones, for erecting the mill at Huntingdon, rather than elsewhere, which will be described more fully under the head of my commercial remembrances. In the spring of 1863, I removed to Huntingdon to live, upon the opening of the mill. Prior to this, the Huntingdon Nonconformists had taken steps to, at some time in the near future, erect a new chapel, and in a more prominent place than that one in Cook’s Lane, as the Grammar School Lane was then called, and they had already purchased the large house on the Market Hill, formerly occupied by the London and County Banks—a site certainly prominent enough, if that were an advantage, but there could not have been so much room on that site as where Trinity Church now is. Then it was too near All Saints’ Church. Our proximity to that might have been looked upon as ostentatiously antagonistic, which we had no desire to be; and, besides, the three ecclesiastical buildings of the town, from an architectural point of view (that is, the distant view) looked better being in different parts of the town than having them close together. But the site above named (now the Town and County Club) was abandoned, and ultimately was sold to Messrs. Fosters, Bankers, of Cambridge, for the sum of £500. Such was the position as regards the erecting {70} of a new place of worship when the mill was built, and Brown and Goodman became thereby connected with Huntingdon. Most likely, whether they had gone to the town or not, a new chapel would have been erected, but I think I may say, without presumption, it would not have been on the same scale or the same architecture as it now is.
A little information about the position Nonconformists occupied an the town from the beginning of the 19th century is necessary here for fully understanding what followed. There was always a tale, whether it was only a legend I know not, but it was said about the beginning of the century the church bells were rung because the last Dissenter had either died or left the town. But whether that was so or not, it shows the feeling that was supposed to exist on the part of Churchmen towards their Nonconformist fellow-townsmen. The following is no legend, but a well authenticated fact, that when the old property in Cook’s Lane was erected (now the British School) a gentleman outside the town was employed to purchase it, for fear, if it got wind that the Dissenters were purchasing it to build a chapel on, it would be impossible to buy it. The above-mentioned gentleman, though a stranger, did not think it wise to appear in the matter himself, but employed someone on the day of the sale whom he could trust to buy the property, and then it was knocked down to this individual; the Nonconformists considered they had lost the property {71} until they were told it was bought on their account. This gives some little insight into the feelings of the dominant party towards Nonconformists. There is a further illustration: Mr. Michael Foster, a leading and respected surgeon in the town for many years, returned as a Town Councillor by his fellow-townsmen, was, year after year, passed over from filling the office of Mayor because of his religious opinions, and I think I am correct in saying there had not been a Nonconformist Mayor since the time of Oliver Cromwell. This is now all changed, as will be explained under the political sketch.
After my living in Huntingdon, or immediately before, a fund was commenced towards building the new chapel. Certain gentlemen agreed that the Nonconformists of the town should raise amongst themselves £2,000, and get the remainder elsewhere, and, considering this was to be exclusive of what my father and myself were to give, it was a noble amount to raise, as there were no wealthy people connected with the congregation in the town. My father promised £1,000, and agreed to raise another £1,000 from gentlemen in the large towns of Lancs. and elsewhere; I gave £2,000; Messrs. Foster, bankers, Cambridge, £500; Mr. Samuel Morley, £500; and Mr. Coote, of Fenstanton, contributed. And then the site where Trinity Church now stands was, after considerable trouble and a great amount of bargaining, finally purchased. The building, with the land behind, stands on three or four properties, belonging to different individuals, and, {72} as soon as we had purchased one property, there was a danger of one of the other owners demanding an exorbitant price. The purchase at last was accomplished, and the centre building was a large, old inn or coaching house, “The Dolphin.” When the foundations were dug some French coppers were found, indicating that the French prisoners, during the great war at the beginning of the century, had stopped there on the way through to the Stilton Barracks. The having purchased the site on the Market Hill was of great advantage to us in procuring a new one, and, therefore, anyone who might have moved to prevent us getting a site, were only too anxious for us to obtain another one rather than the one on the Market Hill.