Primitive Methodism - Origins

Origins

Primitive Methodism was seen to originate in an All Day of Prayer (often miscalled a "Camp Meeting") held in the area of The Potteries at Mow Cop, Staffordshire on 31 May 1807. This led, in 1811, to two groups joining together, the 'Camp Meeting Methodists' and the 'Clowesites' led by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes respectively.

The movement was spawned from the followers of these men. Bourne and Clowes were charismatic evangelists. Both had reputations for zeal and were sympathetic to ideas the Wesleyan Connexion condemned. Their belief that was most unacceptable to the Wesleyan Connexion was their support for so-called camp meetings. These were day-long, open air meetings involving public praying, preaching and Love Feasts.

Clowes was a first generation Methodist convert—at the age of 25 he renounced his desire to be the finest dancer in England. The movement was also influenced by the backgrounds of the two men: Clowes had worked as a potter, while Bourne had been a wheelwright. Both of them had been expelled from the Wesleyan Connexion—Bourne in 1808 and Clowes in 1810. The reason given for Clowes' expulsion was that he behaved "contrary to the Methodist discipline," therefore he could not be a "preacher or leader amongst them unless promised not to attend meetings anymore."

It seems likely that this was not its only concern regarding the pair. Bourne's association with the American evangelist Lorenzo Dow would have put him in a dim light with Wesleyan leaders. The Wesleyan leadership's hostility to Dow is demonstrated by a threat Dow received from prominent Wesleyan Thomas Coke (twice president of the Conference in 1797 and 1805) on his arrival in London around 1799. Coke threatened to "write to Lord Castlereagh to inform him who and what you are, that we disown you,... then you'll be arrested and committed to prison."

The Wesleyan Connexion was also concerned about Bourne and Clowes' association with the "Magic Methodists" or "Forest Methodists" led by James Crawfoot, the "old man of Delamere Forest". He was significant to both Bourne and Clowes and was for a time their spiritual mentor. He held prayer meetings where people had visions and fell into trances. Crawfoot, according to Owen Davies, had developed a reputation for possessing supernatural powers. Indeed Henry Wedgwood, writing later in the century, recalled that many locals at the time were terrified of the magical powers of an innkeeper called Zechariah Baddeley, but that they considered Baddeley's powers nothing next to Crawfoot's prayers and preaching.

The enthusiasm associated with revivalism was seen as disreputable by the early 19th century establishment. In 1799, the Bishop of Lincoln claimed that the "ranter" element of Methodism was so dangerous that the government must ban itinerancy. Men like Bourne and Clowes were not educated and their preaching and mass conversion was threatening. The Wesleyan Methodists, such as Coke, wanted to distance themselves from such populism. The death of John Wesley removed a restraining influence on popular Methodism: there was no obvious leader or authority, and power was invested in the Wesleyan Conference. The Wesleyans formally split from the Church of England, which led them to greater organisation and self-definition, and the leadership could now withhold the tickets of members, like Bourne and Clowes, who did not behave in the way expected by the Conference. The result was less tolerance for internal dissent, and a weakening of the movement's leadership.

The Camp Meeting Methodists looked back to the early days of the Methodist movement and considered that field preaching was acceptable. Despite their exclusion from the Connexion, Clowes and Bourne and the assistants who appeared to help them became involved in a task which The Romance of Primitive Methodism saw as a work of primary evangelisation. The same book also regards the Primitive Methodist denomination as an independent growth rather than as an offshoot of mainstream Methodism.