^{page 209 note 1} J.E.H., xi (1960), 213–18Google Scholar. This essay is greatly indebted to Dr. Nuttall for his comments.

^{page 209 note 2} Howard, Luke, A Looking-Glass for Baptists, London 1671, 5Google Scholar, mentioned a mission in Kent by William Kiffin ‘In the year 1643 and 1644’ related in some way to ‘the Seven Churches’ in London.

^{page 209 note 3} For Miles see D.N.B., and Richards, Thomas, The Puritan Movement in Wales, London 1920.Google Scholar

^{page 209 note 4} The Ilston Churchbook, 171 f., from an undated letter (probably 1650) from ‘one of the congregations of Christ meeting in the Glasshouse in London’. This ambiguous phrase probably meant ‘the congregation meeting in the Glasshouse’, but it could mean 5 ‘one of several congregations meeting there’—in association. (The Ilston Churchbook is now deposited at Brown University, R.I., U.S.A. A facisimile can be examined in the National Library of Wales—N.L.W. MSS. 9108–9. This letter was also transcribed into the Llanwenarth Churchbook (also in N.L.W.) and published by Ivimey, Joseph, History of the English Baptists, London 1811, iGoogle Scholar. 236 f. Ilston Churchbook, 5. ii. 165.

^{page 210 note 1} Ilston Churchbook, 165.

^{page 210 note 2} Ibid., 9.

^{page 210 note 3} Ibid., 164² (162–5 were duplicated in numbering). This church was normally referred to as the ‘church at the Hay’.

^{page 210 note 4} Ibid., 168: no date given but the record of its foundation followed a letter dated May 1650 and preceded one dated August 1650.

^{page 210 note 5} Ibid., 169. Carmarthen (see ibid., 23, 25) seems to have grown from a branch of the Ilston Church.

^{page 210 note 6} Joshua Thomas MS.: ‘The History of the Baptist Churches in Wales’ (Bristol Baptist College Library), 93. This was Thomas's own translation and expansion of an earlier work of his which had been published in Welsh. The Abergavenny church later migrated to Llanwenarth nearby, hence the title ‘Llanwenarth Churchbook’. These records were more extensive when Thomas examined them in the eighteenth century than to-day, and his MS. contains transcriptions of sections now lost.

^{page 210 note 7} It is symptomatic of the pressures which this ‘closed communion’ group underwent that Thomas Proud was excluded from fellowship at Ilston for a period in 1651 (Ilston Churchbook, 33) for ‘having grieviously sinned against God by broaching ye destructive opinion maintaining ye mixed comio of ye baptized and unbaptized in visible church fellowship’. The Abergavenny congregation joined with other churches linked with John Tombes and Henry Jessey, both ‘open communion’ leaders, in a letter to Hexham (Underhill, E. B., Records of … Hexham, London 1854, 341–6Google Scholar). At a meeting of representatives of the various churches held at Aberavon on 1 and 2 March 1654 Abergavenny was advised ‘to take heed of mixed communion with unbaptized persons or any others walking disorderly’ (Thomas, Joshua, A History of the Baptist Association in Wales, London 1795, 11).Google Scholar

^{page 210 note 8} The Llanwenarth records now known do not explicitly state that the Abergavenny congregation was founded by Miles or his assistants but the Ilston Churchbook (39) recorded that, at the General Meeting in July 1653, ‘the great worke of settling the Church at Abergavenny was … Concluded & setled’. It was on 3 September 1653 that John Tombes disputed at Abergavenny about the true nature of baptism and was described as coming ‘to water that which Mr. Miles, Prosser and others had planted’: J.W., , A Publick Dispute …, London 1654Google Scholar, The Epistle Dedicatory.

^{page 211 note 1} The General Meetings (referred to by these numbers in the main text) were: First, at Ilston, 6–7 November 1650. Ilston, Llanharan, Hay represented. (Source: Ilston Churchbook, 25 f.). Second, at Carmarthen, 19 March 1651. Ilston, Llanharan, Hay, Carmarthen represented. (Source: ibid., 29 f.). Third, at Abergavenny, 14–15 July 1653. Ilston, Llanharan, Hay, Carmarthen, Abergavenny represented. (Source: ibid., 39 f. and Joshua Thomas, op. cit., 9f.). Fourth, at Aberason, 1–2 March 1654. All apparently represented. (Source: Joshua Thomas, ibid., 10 f.). Fifth, at Llantrisaint, 30–31 August 1654. All five represented. (Source: Joshua Thomas, ibid., 11–15.). According to Thomas (ibid., 15), a next meeting was planned for March 1655, but he had found no records of it.

^{page 211 note 2} It seems that Joshua Thomas first applied the term ‘association’ to these meeetings of the Ilston group of churches. It is not used in the extant records.

^{page 211 note 3} Thomas, probably rightly (ibid., 16 f.), considered the meeting at Brecon 29–30 July 1656, which produced An Antidote against the Infection of the Times, to have been one of these general meetings. Elders and messengers from Ilston, Tredinog (near Llantrisaint, Monmouthshire), Abergavenny, Carmarthen, Hereford, Bredwardine and Clodock (both in Herefordshire and branches of the congregation meeting originally at Hay), and Llangorse (in Breconshire, a branch of the Abergavenny church) attended. Lumpkin, W. L. (Baptist Confessions of Faith, Chicago 1959, 216 ff.)Google Scholar claimed, with some justice, that the Antidote was virtually a Confession of Faith. Thomas Richards, in The Puritan Movement in Wales, 202, 207, seems to imply that these records suggest that Miles was drifting away, in polity and doctrine, from the London leaders. On the whole this view is not substantiated by the evidence he cites.

^{page 211 note 4} The propriety, or otherwise, of accepting state stipends was to be much canvassed in the associations, but John Miles himself had no objection to accepting such maintenance and he came under some criticism for holding this position.

^{page 212 note 1} Such a decision as this was normally taken by the individual congregation, of which the person so chosen was a member.

^{page 212 note 2} Joshua Thomas, op. cit., 12–15.

^{page 212 note 3} Letters from London received before the Irish correspondence of 1653 were:

i. ‘To the Churches of Christ in Walles’, n.d., probably 1650.

ii. To Llanharan, 12 January 1651 (all dates are here given according to the new style).

iii. To Hay, n.d.

iv. To Carmarthen, 2 March 1650.

v. To Ilston, 14 March 1650.

vi. To Ilston, 2 March 1650.

vii. ‘To the churches of Christ wch are in Wales’, 14 February 1652.

^{page 213 note 1} Ilston Churchbook, 186: letter vii, above, 212 n. 3.

^{page 213 note 2} See especially letters iii, v, vi, and vii, above, 212 n. 3.

^{page 213 note 3} Ilston Churchbook, 186.

^{page 213 note 4} Ibid., 186–9. This paragraph was printed by Ivimey, op. cit., i. 239.

^{page 213 note 5} These letters, together with some information about the Irish churches, were transcribed into both the Ilston and Llanwenarth Churchbooks. All these materials were printed by Ivimey, op. cit., i. 240–52.

^{page 213 note 6} This seems the most likely explanation (other than that of a simple mistake) of the fact that the Ilston transcription of the London letter (Ilston Churchbook, 193 f.) is headed ‘from the Church of Christ at Glasshouse London’, whilst at its foot is a note that the letter was ‘from sevall Churches of Christ in London’, as found in other transcriptions of it.

It ought also to be noted that, although omitted by Ivimey, the transcriptions of the Irish letter, in both the Ilston and the Llanwenarth Churchbooks, are headed ‘for the Churches of Christ in London when assembled’. This seems to be evidence of a meeting of Elders and Messengers in London in 1653 similar to those in Wales.

Later the Irish churches sent a general letter of exhortation to Ilston and Llantrisaint, dated from Dublin 12 June 1656 (Ilston Churchbook, 207 f., printed by Ivimey, op. cit., i. 253–5).

^{page 213 note 7} Llanwenarth Churchbook, 187. The decision to approach the Glaziers' Hall church was taken in December 1655. On 27 January, William Rider (described in W. T. Whitley's Baptist Bibliography as ‘Southwark G.B.’ and who wrote Layings on of Hands Asserted in 1656) arrived at what may have been a General Meeting held at Hay with a commission to expound the matter. As a consequence of his exposition, fifteen men and women had hands laid upon them by Rider and his companion, Robert Hopkin. It may be pointed out that if this were a general meeting it would fit into the bi-annual pattern laid down earlier, especially if the meeting at Brecon in July were taken as next in series.

^{page 214 note 1} Payne, E. A., ‘Thomas Tillam’, in Baptist Quarterly, xvii (1957–8)Google Scholar, gave a succinct account of his career.

^{page 214 note 2} E. B. Underhill, op. cit., 289.

^{page 214 note 3} The reference to ‘the seven churches in London’ is further evidence that the London ‘closed communion’ churches were a recognised, close-knit group in 1651.

^{page 214 note 4} E. B. Underhill, op. cit., 320. This echoes two important earlier London Particular Baptist statements of faith and policy:

i. The Confession of Faith of those Churches which are commonly (though falsly) called Anabaptists, London 1644. Modified editions were published in 1646 and 1651. Then, in 1652, the 1651 edition was reprinted without alteration. An introduction to, and a reprint of, the 1644 Confession may be found in W. L. Lumpkin, op. cit. The Confession of 1644 afforded not only the first evidence of seven London congregations of Calvinistic ‘closed membership’ churches acting in concert: it also outlined the convictions, and foreshadowed the policy, upon which their later missions were to be based. Article xxxiii of the 1644 Confession restricted membership to those who had been baptised as believers and Article xlv affirmed that any church member ‘to whom God hath given gifts, being tryed in the Church, may and ought, by the appointment of the congregation, to … teach publickly the Word of God’. In 1646 and 1651 slight modifications appear in these articles but they are purely verbal and do not alter the substantial meaning, ii. Benjamin Cox, An Appendix to a Confession of Faith, 1646. After the revision of the Confession in 1646 one of the signatories, Benjamin Cox, brought out this Appendix, later the same year (Thomason's copy is marked ‘November 30th’) to emphasise and expand some of the teaching given there. He wrote, he said, to meet ‘the inquiry of some well-affected and godly persons in the Country’. The whole tone of the pamphlet, where the characteristic personal pronoun was not ‘I’ but ‘we’, suggests that Cox himself felt to be supplying not so much a personal gloss on the Confession but a further expansion and exposition of the joint mind of those who had signed it.

Two of his paragraphs deal explicitly with the subject of this essay. The first dealt with the qualifications and the powers of itinerant evangelists: ‘A disciple gifted and enabled by the spirit of Christ to preach the Gospel … is a man authorised and sent by Christ … And they which are converted from unbelief and false-worship, and so brought into Church-fellowship by such preachers … are a seale of their ministry … And such preachers of the Gospel may not onely lawfully administer Baptism unto beleevers, and guide the action of a Church in the use of the Supper … but may also call upon the churches, and advise them to choose fit men for officers, and may settle such officers so chosen by a Church, in the places or offices to which they are chosen, by imposition of hands and prayer’.

Although the biblical references have been omitted, it is clear that the N.T., seen through the eyes of a left wing seventeenth-century puritan, is the basis of his teaching. The second paragraph of importance made the ‘closed communion’ doctrine more explicit: ‘we … doe not admit any to the use of the Supper, nor communicate with any in the use of this ordinance, but disciples baptised, lest we should have fellowship with them in their doeing contrary to order’.

^{page 214 note 5} Underhill, op. cit., 289.

^{page 215 note 1} Underhill, op. cit., 291. This man, Edward Hickhorngill (who appears in D.N.B. as Edmund Hickeringill), 1631–1708, then joined the Parliamentary troops at Dalkeith as chaplain. His letters to Hexham have survived (Underhill, op. cit., 307 ff.) all having been written in 1653. He seems to have been an unstable and an unsatisfactory missioner. Another Hexham member, Thomas Stackhouse, reported (ibid., 330) that the church at Leith had excommunicated Hickhorngill, but that he, Stackhouse, had pointed out ‘that it was the judgement of some in the church at Hexham, that no person ought to have the censure of excommunication past upon him in any church, but in that only wherein he was first a member; and that it was conceived to be their duty only to admonish, withdraw, and certify concerning him’.

The church ‘usually meeting at Leith and Edinburgh’ (Rippon, J., The Baptist Annual Register, 1794–7, 361Google Scholar) published a reprint of the London Confession in March 1653, insisting upon their unity, in faith and order, with the London churches. One of their leaders, Abraham Holmes, had shared in the Army debates at Putney in 1647 (Clarke Papers, passim.).

^{page 215 note 2} Underhill, op. cit., 309.

^{page 215 note 3} Ibid., 292 f.

^{page 215 note 4} Hobson and Gower had signed the London Confession in 1644 and 1646 on behalf of a church there. Whitley, W. T., ‘The Rev. Colonel Paul Hobson’, Baptist Quarterly, ix (1938–9)Google Scholar, reviewed some of Hobson's activities.

^{page 215 note 5} E. B. Underhill, op. cit., 323; for Chamberlen see D.N.B. He was a Seventh-Day Baptist leader.

^{page 215 note 6} Ibid., 336–40.

^{page 215 note 7} This congregation met in Coleman Street proper: ibid., 346 ff.

^{page 215 note 8} Ibid., 349 ff. Henry Jessey (1601–63), who was baptised in 1645 by Hanserd Knollys, continued to practice ‘open communion’ in his congregation, which had originally been gathered by Henry Jacob on paedo-baptist principles. Hence, Jessey did not share in the Confession of 1644 or its later editions. On the other hand, Knollys, who had signed the Confession in 1646, collaborated with him both in dealing with Thomas Tillam (ibid., 345) and in the propagation of Fifth Monarchy views.

^{page 216 note 1} Underbill, op. cit., 295. Evidently ‘the church in Coleman Street’ is here a loose way of referring to Knollys's congregation in Swan Alley: see ibid., 294, where Gower is said to have ‘laboured with the church at London, from whom Mr. Tillam was a messenger’, i.e.—against Tillam.

^{page 216 note 2} Ibid., 295 f. and E. A. Payne, ‘Thomas Tillam’, loc. cit.

^{page 216 note 3} E. B. Underhill, op. cit.

^{page 216 note 4} Payne, E. A., The Baptists of Berkshire (1951), 147–9Google Scholar, printed from the Gould (Berks.) MS. the record of the meetings held in October and November 1952 at Wormsley, Oxon. These were not recorded in the Abingdon MS. The latter, deposited in the Angus Library, Regent's Park College, came into Dr. Payne's hands too late to be used in his The Baptists of Berkshire. It reports the meetings of what eventually became the Berkshire Baptist Association from December 1652 to June 1660 and consists of 87 pages (9 in. by 5 in.) in the small, neat, hand of a single scribe. I shall cite it as the ‘Abingdon Association MS.’ to distinguish it from the Gould (Berkshire) MS. (which reports, more briefly, some of the same meetings), first because it came to include, during this period, more congregations outside Berkshire than inside it and secondly to follow the precedent set by the report of the 1690 General Assembly which referred to ‘The Association of the Churches in Abbington, &c.’.

^{page 216 note 5} This was printed by Payne, op. cit., 149, but included the names of congregations at Wantage, Kingston, etc., who joined later. The Gould MS. has them inserted in a hand different from that recording the first five.

^{page 216 note 6} Abingdon MS., 3.

^{page 217 note 1} These constitutional decisions are not recorded of any other association owing, no doubt, to the brevity of the extant documents. Since, however, this association later divided (see below) and since the so-called ‘Midland Association’ was probably, as will be seen, modelled upon this and has records of a similar type, it may be fairly assumed that they all shared the same basis. Similar records for the Western Association, together with considerable mutual inter-association visiting, would support the view that that association was similarly constituted.

^{page 217 note 2} Abingdon Association MS., 4. There can be little doubt that this Benjamin Cox wrote An Appendix in 1646. In Trans. Bap. Hist. Soc., vi (1918–19)Google Scholar, ‘Benjamin Cox’, the author noted a gap in Cox's known biography 1646–58 together with his association with Edward Harrison (once vicar of Kensworth) and the congregation meeting at Petty France, London. The Abingdon Association MS., 9, mentions Cox as ‘of Dunstable’ and reveals links with Petty France.

^{page 217 note 3} Ibid., 4 f. This letter's address to the ‘Church of Christ of which our brethren John Spilsberie and William Kiffen are members, and to the rest of the churches in and neare London, agreeing wth the said church in principles and constitutions, and accordingly holding comunion with the same’ poses a problem, since the Confessions of 1644 and 1646 show Kiffin and Spilsbury as leaders of different congregations. Had they come together again during this period? It hardly seems possible that Benjamin Cox would make a mistake about the London leaders.

^{page 217 note 4} This letter appears to contain the earliest use of the term ‘association’ in the materials now extant.

^{page 217 note 5} 4 October 1653, 27 December 1653, 29 March 1654, 5–6 September 1654.

^{page 217 note 6} Abingdon Association MS., 7–11.

^{page 218 note 1} For John Pendarves cf. Payne, op. cit. Whitley, W. T., in A History of British Baptists (2nd ed. 1932), 92Google Scholar wrote: ‘fraternal intercourse was maintained, but not between the associations as such’. This statement can now be seen to be incorrect. It should also be noted that the Warwick church was requested to send details of their meetings for Pendarves and Cox ‘to our brother Samuell Tull of London’. It will be remembered that Tull had shared in the Ilston correspondence at one point.

^{page 218 note 2} Abingdon Association MS., 11–13.

^{page 218 note 3} E. A. Payne (op. cit., 19) thought ‘Kingston’ was Kingston-on-Thames in Surrey but the Abingdon Association MS. (75) suggests that it was, in fact, more probably Kingston Blount in Oxfordshire.

^{page 218 note 4} Abingdon Association MS. 13–21.

^{page 218 note 5} This letter was signed by John Pendarves and Thomas Collier. Pendarves also signed the letter from Wells in April 1656: cf. Nuttall, G. F., ‘The Baptist Western Association 1653–1658’, J.E.H., xi (1960).Google Scholar

^{page 218 note 6} Abingdon Association MS. 21–30.

^{page 218 note 7} Cf. J. Ivimey, History, ii. 170 ff. for Kensworth.

^{page 218 note 8} Abingdon Association MS., 30–40.

^{page 219 note 1} Abingdon Association M.S., 40–6.

^{page 219 note 2} Cf. the suggestion in the 1653 Irish letter to be discussed below.

^{page 219 note 3} Abingdon Association MS., 46 f.

^{page 219 note 4} Ibid., 48 ff.

^{page 219 note 5} Ibid., 50–5.

^{page 219 note 6} Ibid., 55–9.

^{page 219 note 7} Ibid., 60

^{page 219 note 8} Ibid., 65–8.

^{page 219 note 9} Its single messenger was Richard Deane.

^{page 219 note 10} Abingdon Association MS., 68–79. At Tetsworth Wallingford was represented.

^{page 220 note 1} Presumably these were those adopted by the Midland Association: see below. At the autumn meeting in 1657 the right of women to speak in church meetings was discussed at Tetsworth and account was taken of the decision of the Midland messengers on the same subject at Moreton-in-the-Marsh in 1656. Cf. Abingdon Association MS., 64.

^{page 220 note 2} Abingdon Association MS., 79–83.

^{page 220 note 3} Ibid., 83–7.

^{page 220 note 4} Henry Jessey, The Lords Loud Call to England, 1660, 24–6, printed a letter from Reading Gaol dated 16 July signed by John Jones, Richard Steed, Robert Keate, Thomas Jones, John Peck, John Combes. (Only John Jones attended at Tetsworth in June).

^{page 220 note 5} These were printed, with minor inaccuracies, by Ivimey, op. cit., i. 240–52.

^{page 220 note 6} It will be remembered that the Welsh churches took up this suggestion.

^{page 220 note 7} E.g., William Consett and Edward Drapes (who had died in Ireland). Also Peter Row, Edward Roberts.

^{page 220 note 8} Patient had been a prime mover in a letter sent from Waterford to Dublin warning the latter church against ‘open communion’: cf. John Rogers, Ohel or Beth-Shemesh, 1653. The letter (ibid., 302–6) was dated 14 January 1651/2).

^{page 221 note 1} The word ‘association’ was not used in any of the Irish documents, although the contrary was implied by Whitley, W. T. in ‘The Plantation of Ireland and the Early Baptist Churches’, Baptist Quarterly, i (1922–3), 280.Google Scholar

^{page 221 note 2} W. L. Lumpkin, op. cit., 151 f.

^{page 221 note 3} W. T. Whitley, Baptist Bibliography, i. 57.

^{page 221 note 4} G. F. Nuttall, loc. cit.

^{page 221 note 5} See below. It seems likely, from the careful index prepared for the Abingdon Association MS., from a similar index in the Leominster Churchbook of ‘ye Principall things handled in these conclusions of ye messengers’, and from Collier's publication of Several Resolutions and Answers of Queries for the Western churches, that these decisions were recorded to give a background of ‘case-law’ for the guidance of local congregations.

^{page 222 note 1} There were two autumn meetings in 1656.

^{page 222 note 2} Thomas Collier (op. cit.) reported the meeting at Wells in November 1653 as the first.

^{page 222 note 3} The meeting at Dorchester in May 1658 is rather fully described in John Thurloe's State Papers, ed. T. Birch, London 1742, vii. 138 ff. William Kiffin, John Vernon and William Allen (see P. N. Hardacre, ‘William Allen’, Baptist Quarterly, xix. 298–308) were present.

^{page 222 note 4} Collier's term was not ‘association’, but ‘general meetings of Messengers’, like that used at Ilston.

^{page 222 note 5} Cf. G. F. Nuttall, op. cit., 213 n. 1.

^{page 222 note 6} Collier insisted that the reason for the production of the 1656 Western Confession was not disagreement with London but in order to provide independent evidence both of the orthodoxy of his churches and of their agreement with London: (Underhill, E. B., Confessions of Faith, London 1854, 63 f.Google Scholar

^{page 222 note 7} Cf. Thomas Collier, Several Resolutions &c., 6, 14 f.

^{page 222 note 8} Cf. Abingdon Association MS., 43, 61–3. According to a letter in the Ilston Churchbook (165–7) from Barnstaple, dated 9 May 1650, from John Coleman there was at that time no Baptist community in the town.

^{page 222 note 9} This affair can be reconstructed from two pamphlets: Richard Ballamie The Leper Cleansed (1657); Richard Steed and Abraham Cheare, A Plaine Discovery of the Unrighteous Judge (1658).

^{page 222 note 10} Oddly enough Cheare, whose letter led to the London initiative on stipends in 1657 (see below), appeared, from the extant records, to play no part in the general meetings led by Thomas Collier.

^{page 222 note 11} Friends' Library, Euston Road, London, Tract T.323.16, 4 f.

^{page 222 note 1} W. L. Lumpkin, op. cit., 198–200.

^{page 222 note 2} Daniel King may have been a General Baptist at first, since a small treatise, entitled Self the Grand Enemy of Jesus Christ, written by a ‘Daniell King’ and undated was printed by the General Baptist Francis Smith. But, in A Discovery of some Troublesom Thoughts (1651), dated from Southwark ‘7th of the 11th Moneth’ (1651), he mentioned, in his Preface, ‘the Churches of Christ in London meeting usually at the glass-house in Broad Street, the Church in Coventry, the Church in Warwick, the Church at Hook Norton in Oxfordshire; and the Church meeting neer Martin-Hinmarsh (sic) in Gloucestershire, or any others to whom I am neer related’.

^{page 222 note 3} In A Way to Sion (1650) by Daniel King, the Epistle Dedicatory was signed by Thomas Patient, John Spilsbury, William Kiffin and John Pearson. The mention, in the previous footnote, of the ‘Churches’ meeting in Glaziers' Hall suggests regular inter-congregational meetings there, perhaps of an association type. It will be remembered that the Welsh churches received the important Irish letter of 1653 ‘from the Church of Christ at the Glasshouse London’ and yet, at the foot, it was designated as from ‘the sevall Churches of Christ in London’.

^{page 222 note 4} Abingdon Association MS., 8–9, has a transcription of a letter to Warwick from Tetsworth dated 27 December 1654, answering a request for advice as to how to associate. With the letter were enclosed ‘a copie of the Agreement of the churches, and of the grounds for the said Agreement, and the result of this present meeting’.

^{page 222 note 5} The existing records of this association during this period are to be found in:

i. the Bourton-on-the-Water Churchbook, as transcribed by Benjamin Beddome in the eighteenth century in an abbreviated form.

ii. the Leominster Churchbook, where, on the whole, the material is briefer than in

iii. the Tewkesbury Churchbook.

Warwick, with records from 1697, is the only one of the other churches holding any material from the seventeenth century. Moreton-in-the-Marsh eventually settled a few miles away at Stow-in-the-Wold. Derby died out, but had earlier signed an Address to the Protector (E. B. Underhill, Confessions, 331–4) in company with Hexham and Wharton near Bradford, on 1 March 1655. The signatories were ‘Robert Holpe’ and ‘William Tomblinson’: presumably the same pair were those reported as messengers from Derby at Warwick in April 1656—‘Robert Hope’ and ‘William Tomlison’.

^{page 222 note 6} The meetings which took place are all recorded in the Tewkesbury Churchbook, with the exception of that at Alcester in September (recorded by the Leominster Church-book). After that held on 3 May 1655 to draft the Confession there were meetings as follows:

i. 26 June 1655, Moreton-in-the-Marsh.

ii. 24 October 1655, Moreton-in-the-Marsh.

iii. 7–8 April 1656, Warwick.

iv. 4–6 June 1656, Moreton-in-the-Marsh.

v. 15 October 1656, Alcester.

vi. 2–4 April 1657, Moreton-in-the-Marsh.

vii. 15–17 September, Alcester (reported in the Leominster Churchbook).

viii. 13–14 October 1657, Gloucester.

ix. 1 June 1658, Cirencester.

x. 13–14 April 1658, Alcester.

xi. 22 September 1658, Moreton-in-the-Marsh.

xii. 5–6 October 1658, Gloucester.

^{page 224 note 1} Tewkesbury Churchbook, 7.

^{page 224 note 2} Leominster Churchbook, 21.

^{page 224 note 3} In E. B. Underhill (ed.), Records of the Churches of Christ, 344 f., a letter dated 2 October 1653 was signed ‘for the church at Lintile’ (probably Leinthall Starkes), ‘in Herefordshire’ by John Tombes as pastor and by John Patshall and John Wancklin as deacons. At Alcester, 15–17 September 1657 (Leominster Churchbook, 16 f.), ‘It was debated Whether ye Church at Leominster & Hereford yt walkes distinct from Mr Tombs were rightly constituted’. It was agreed that it was and that it should be received into association and that a protest from Tombs's congregation claiming that their withdrawal as members was wrong should be answered that the withdrawal had been ‘theyr liberty & theyr duty’. As late as 1689 a Letter in the Leominster Churchbook reported that there were still supporters of Mr. Tombs in the area.

^{page 225 note 1} Tewkesbury Churchbook, 22.

^{page 225 note 2} Cf. Abingdon Association MS., 45 for a letter commending Cox to them.

^{page 225 note 3} E. B. Underhill, op. cit., 345 listed Richard Harrison as leader, in 1653, of a church meeting in Netherton, Worcs. Cox's letter to ‘bro Harrison’ was transcribed into the Leominster Churchbook (141–6). It is noteworthy that Cox cited ‘ye grounds & Arguments of our Brethren in ye west’ (cf. Several Resolutions and answers of queries, 9–10 reporting on Wells, 8–10 April 1656). Earlier in 1657 the whole matter had been discussed at Devizes at a meeting on 9 July at which Tull, Harrison, Kiffin, Deane, Hobson and Cheare had been present to sign a letter which was also transcribed into the Leominster Churchbook (148–9).

^{page 225 note 4} Tewkesbury Churchbook, 30 f.

^{page 225 note 5} A similar decision had been taken at Tetsworth the year before.

^{page 225 note 6} Tewkesbury Churchbook, 31.

^{page 225 note 7} Leominster Churchbook, 18 ff.

^{page 225 note 8} Article XLVII reads: ‘And although the particular Congregations be distinct and severall Bodies, every one as a compact and knit Citie in it selfe; yet are they all to walk by one and the same Rule, and by all meanes convenient to have the counsell and help one of another in all needfull affaires of the Church, as members of one body in the common faith under Christ their onely head’.

^{page 226 note 1} Abingdon Association MS., 51–3.

^{page 226 note 2} The scheme was revived at the 1689 Assembly, but did not become effective until the foundation of the Particular Baptist Fund in 1717.

^{page 226 note 3} Abingdon Association MS., 61 ff.

^{page 226 note 4} Letters for Strange were to be sent ‘to brother Cree's at the Adam and Eve upon the old Exchange, or to brother Tull's’.