Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House

“WE ARE NOW IN THE TABERNACLE OF MEETING”: THE ORIGINS AND FOUNDERS OF THE IPSWICH UNITARIAN MEETING HOUSE

Clifford M. Reed, Minister Emeritus, Ipswich Unitarian M.H.

NOTE: The nomenclature for the Meeting House has varied over the 325 years of its existence which may cause confusion, so an explanation might be helpful.. When opened it was called a ‘Meeting House’ but later it was called both a ‘Chapel’ and a ‘Church’ before returning to being called a ‘Meeting House’ in the 1950s. In the 18th century it was variously described as being ‘Presbyterian’, ‘Dissenting’ or ‘Protestant Dissenting’ before ‘Unitarian’ was settled upon in the 19th century. It has also been called the ‘St. Nicholas Old Meeting House’, not as a dedication but because it is in the historic St. Nicholas parish.

1. The 17th Century Background

The Commonwealth period of the mid-17th century saw the breakdown (albeit temporary) of the Episcopalian system of the Church of England. A range of sects, including Baptists and Quakers, became free to operate but the predominant denominations were the Presbyterians and the Independents (or Congregationalists). Both were rooted in Calvinism – which determined their theology and their ideas of how a place of worship should be designed and arranged – but they differed on the subject of organisation. Both held that the ‘preaching of the Word’ was central to worship and that therefore the pulpit should be the central feature of a place of worship. This they preferred to call a Meeting House rather than a church, a word they reserved for the community of believers rather than a building. Neither, at this time, did they use the word ‘chapel’, which had other connotations. On organisation, the Independents rejected the idea of a national Church, believing that each local community of believers was a Christian church in its own right. The Presbyterians, on the other hand did believe that there should be a national Church of England, but that it should not be Episcopalian in its governance, with a structure run by bishops and archbishops. Instead congregations should be grouped into presbyteries and run by presbyters with a General Assembly as the national governing authority. This fully developed Presbyterian system, which was adopted in Scotland and (by non-Episcopalian Protestants) in Ireland, was not instituted in England, even though Presbyterian ministers did take over the pulpits of many English parish churches during the 1650s. For neither Presbyterians nor Independents – nor for sects such as the Baptists – were their ministers priests in the sacerdotal sense held by Anglicans or Roman Catholics. Their authority rested on their education and ordination as preachers and teachers rather than as intermediaries between God and the believer with a particular or exclusive authority to administer the sacraments.

For the purposes of this paper it should be said that few if any of these ministers or congregations were theologically unorthodox in a Unitarian sense, although Unitarian beliefs were not unknown. These were usually called ‘Socinian’, after the Italian thinker, Faustus Socinus (Fausto Paolo Sozzini), the foremost theologian of the Polish Minor Reformed Church or Polish Brethren. He had rejected, amongst other ‘orthodox’ doctrines, that of the Trinity. He had died in 1604 but his ideas, which spread to England, had not. So suspect were they that in 1648 Parliament enacted the so-called ‘Draconian Ordinance’ which outlawed the “preaching, teaching, printing or writing” of ideas and beliefs that questioned Trinitarian doctrine. This outlawing of Unitarianism – on pain of death – remained on the statute book until 1813 and although it was rarely enforced it remained a brake on the open profession of Unitarianism until its repeal. Although Unitarian beliefs were not unknown in Suffolk at this time, they were not to become part of our story for some years yet.

The Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II also meant the restoration of the Episcopalian Church of England, with a series of Acts of Parliament that became known as the ‘Clarendon Code’, after the Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. In 1661, the Corporation Act made the taking of Anglican Communion a requirement for holding public office, so excluding those who became known as Dissenters or Nonconformists. These terms appeared following the next year’s Act of Uniformity which required all clergy to conform to the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the newly issued 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and to do so by August 24th, St. Bartholomew’s Day. This is a crucial date in our story because on that day, which became known as “Black Bartholomew”, over two thousand clergy (2,275 according to G. R. Clarke’s 1830 history of Ipswich) who refused to ‘conform’ – mainly Presbyterians and Independents – were ‘ejected’ from their livings. Their reasons for dissenting in this way were not so much theological, as we would understand it, but organisational. These Protestant Dissenters or Nonconformists, as they were known, refused to accept the Episcopalian system as set out in the Book of Common Prayer. All over England and Wales Dissenting clergy were forced out of their pulpits – and often their homes – along with a number of other offices which the clergy filled. Only one of them, a Suffolk man named William Manning, is known to have held “Socinian”, that is Unitarian, beliefs. This ‘Great Ejection’, as it was called, not only saw the enforced departure of about one fifth of the total clergy from the Church of England, it also saw the departure of many laypeople too, men and women who shared their Presbyterian and Independent (or Congregational) principles. These laypeople and their ministers were, along with Baptists, to form the Dissenting or Nonconformist congregations that emerged in subsequent decades. Such a congregation was formed in Ipswich, probably in 1662, but their troubles were far from over.

In 1664 the Conventicle Act outlawed meetings of more than five people not of the same household for unauthorised worship. The intention was to prevent the formation of Dissenting congregations. This was followed by the ‘Five Mile Act’ of 1665, which forbade Dissenting or Nonconformist ministers – on pain of imprisonment – from coming within five miles of ‘incorporated’ towns (like Ipswich) or the place where they had formerly ministered. They were also forbidden to teach in schools. Theoretically, at least, this Act remained in force until 1812!

Under the pressure of such legislation, Dissenting congregations had to meet and worship in secret, which is why there is no record of one in Ipswich until 1672. In that year, though, a window opened briefly with a royal ‘indulgence’ that allowed Dissenters to meet and to call ministers. The Ipswich congregation called the Rev. Owen Stockton, one of the ‘ejected’ clergy who had previously held a living in Colchester and for three years afterwards held services in his own home. From 1672 Stockton ministered to the Dissenting congregations in both Ipswich and Colchester. In Ipswich they met in Greyfriars (or Old Monastery) House in Turret Lane, St. Nicholas parish, and Stockton was described as a “Presbyterian and Independent teacher”. The limited toleration didn’t last long and the “indulgence” was revoked a year later by the passage of the Test Act, not being restored until 1689, but the congregation continued under threat of prosecution. A number of ministers suffered imprisonment at this time, among them the Rev. John Fairfax.

Owen Stockton “died of a fever” in September 1680 and was succeeded as minister of the Ipswich congregation by John Fairfax. The ‘ejected’ rector of Barking, Suffolk, Fairfax had defied the Five Mile Act and served a period of imprisonment in Bury St. Edmunds. After becoming minister to the Ipswich Dissenters, both Presbyterians and Independents, Fairfax also continued to preach to a Dissenting congregation in Needham Market. In 1686 the Presbyterians and Independents in the Ipswich congregation parted company, and Fairfax continued as minister with the former group. The Independents went on to form the Congregational church (now Christ Church) in Tacket Street. In 1687 the Ipswich Presbyterians under Fairfax transferred their meetings to a house in Silent Street – near “where the Elephant and Castle stood.” In 1689 the so-called Toleration Act was passed, which permitted freedom of worship to Dissenters and allowed them to build their own Meeting Houses. It took ten years for the Ipswich Presbyterians to achieve this goal, with the contract to build signed on 5th August 1699 and the opening service held on 26th April 1700. John Fairfax preached on that occasion – a sermon entitled ‘Primitiae Synagogae’ (of which more later) – which can be translated as ‘First Meeting Houses’ and is a defence of the congregation’s decision to build their own. Why the need for this? Because the English Presbyterians were, in a sense reluctant Dissenters, and had harboured the hope of returning to a Church of England reformed on Presbyterian lines. By 1699, though, they had pretty much accepted that this would never happen.

The ageing Fairfax had been assisted in his ministry by two other ‘ejected’ clergy, John Butler and Tobias Legg. He died on 11th August 1700 aged 77, to be succeeded in 1701 by the Rev. Samuel Baxter. Fairfax and his congregation were not Unitarians, but something of our liberal religious spirit found expression in the sermon delivered at his funeral by his friend and colleague, the Rev. Samuel Bury of Bury St. Edmunds. Bury said this:

“Let us never impale religion within ourselves or presently call fire from heaven on them that will not receive us. Let religion in its own latitude be the common bond of all union, and whatever difference may be amongst us in smaller matters, yet let us be lovers of all good men.”

2. The Builders

In his sermon on 26th April 1700 (which we usually call ‘the Fairfax sermon’), John Fairfax declared that, “I cannot censure as some do, but must commend this Congregation that they have at so great charge erected this large, spacious Meeting-Place…” He was making it clear that the building was the result of a community effort. But what do we know about that community and its members? Clearly they would have been a substantially different group from those who formed the first group of Ipswich Dissenters thirty-eight years earlier – the passage of time and the withdrawal of the Independents would have seen to that. I have seen a reference (I forget where!) to the Presbyterian congregation having numbered 300 during Fairfax’s ministry but this may only refer to (the mainly male) ‘heads of household’ and exclude not only children and young people but also many or most women. There were probably poorer attenders too who couldn’t afford to be subscribers and so may not have been included in the figures. The capacity of the Meeting House was put at “twelve hundred persons” by Clarke in 1830. However, it is worth saying that places of worship were usually built with plenty of room to spare! At that time the population of Ipswich was around 7,500.

We can put names to some of the families who worshipped at the Meeting House at that time and prominent among them is Bantoft. Thomas Bantoft was a key figure in that it was he who, according to his will of 1705, had bought land in St. Nicholas parish from Thomas Blosse for £150, “since which purchase a Meeting House or Place for the service of Almighty God hath byne erected.” We may assume, I think, that Thomas Bantoft was a major contributor (at least) to the building of the Meeting House too, including £50 towards the cost of the galleries, along with a further £45-10s-0d. He was not the only one. In a codicil he mentions “my cousin John Groome…and John May” who were to be paid “what they lent upon the building the said Chapple.” Thomas Bantoft was a mercer – a dealer in expensive and high quality textiles such as silk – and clearly a successful one. He owned property in Ipswich and “land and estates” in nearby villages and had shares in a ship called the ‘Philip’, the town being an important port which also had shipyards.

Thomas had good Dissenting credentials in that his uncle, the Rev. Samuel Bantoft, had been one of the ‘ejected’ clergy of 1662. Prior to “Black Bartholomew” and his expulsion by an “unrighteous power”, Samuel had been vicar of Stebbing in Essex and a tutor at Cambridge. After the ‘ejection’ he ministered to a Dissenting congregation in Braintree of which “he may with propriety be regarded as the founder” according to the ‘Congregational Magazine’ of July 1828. Of Thomas Bantoft’s immediate family we learn something from his will. No wife is mentioned so we may assume that she was dead by this time, but he names three daughters – Elizabeth, Sarah and Mary – and two sons, Samuel and Thomas. And here we come across what must have been a great sadness to the family. The will lays on his sister, Elizabeth, and cousin, Mary, the responsibility to pay for the care of “my son Thomas Bantoft” who suffered from “a distemper of mind…which renders him uncapable to take care of himselfe.” He was clearly mentally ill and is said elsewhere to have “died insane”. The Elizabeth Bantoft charged with her nephew’s care also played an important role in the story of the congregation. She was clearly a woman of substance and an influential figure at a time when women were mostly kept in the background.

When, on 5th August 1699, six members of the congregation signed the contract for the building of the Meeting House, Thomas Bantoft was one of them. The professions, trades or position of the other five give an idea of what sort of people led the congregation at this time. Two, Edward Gaell and Robert Snelling, are each described as “Gent.”, indicating both wealth and elevated social status. Two others are John Groome (“linen weaver”) and John May (“clothier”), who I mentioned earlier, and the sixth is Thomas Catchpole, “beer brewer”. The contract includes a provision for “four Barrells of good small Beere” to be supplied to the “house carpenter”, Joseph Clark, and his men whilst “Imployed in the said Building” – beer which it seems likely Catchpole supplied! We learn from Catchpole’s will that his wife was called Prisilla and that he owned the ‘Rose’ and the ‘George’ in Ipswich and the ‘Swan’ in Stratford (presumably Stratford St. Mary). Catchpole’s brewery survived until 1923, after which it became part of Tolly Cobbold.

Wills also provide evidence of charitable concern and of the presence in the congregation of less prosperous people. Edward Gaell’s will states, “And unto the poor of the congregation and society whereof I am a member and Mr. Samuel Baxter is Pastor the sum of five pounds to be distributed among them.” Robert Snelling’s will leaves “three pounds amongst four poor persons belonging to the society or congregation whereof I am a member.” One of the first Trustees, William Sparrow, left “forty shillings to the poor of Mr. Samuel Baxter’s congregation in Ipswich.” Another Trustee, John Jennings, made a more comprehensive bequest and left “to ten poor boys that are the sons of poor religious parents belonging to Mr. Baxter’s congregation the sum of sixty pounds, to each boy six pounds to bind them out apprentices to some honest trade or calling.” Jennings also left “to twenty aged poor people belonging to Mr. Baxter’s congregation the sum of ten pounds, to each person ten shillings.”

Trustee Samuel Parish, during the ministry of one of Baxter’s successors made an interesting proviso in his will of 1743. He left £100 “for the support of the Meeting House in Ipswich whereof the said Reverend Mr. Scott is pastor…unless it shall happen by any succeeding troublesome times that the said Meeting House be appropriated to other purposes than the present manner of worshipping of Almighty God there and the Society be broke and dispersed.” Parish was one of those who were not confident that the congregation’s freedom to worship was secure. Parish also took thought for the education of the poor, leaving “to the Dissenters’ Charity School in Ipswich where Elisha Ellinett is Master the sum of forty pounds.”

Elizabeth Bantoft’s will of 1728, besides a list of beneficiaries peppered with names from the congregation, and two of its ministers – Samuel Baxter and Samuel Say – leaves £10 “to the poor of the congregation” and forty shillings “to the industrious poor” of St. Clements and St. Stephens parishes “to be distributed…as my nephew Mr. John Beaumont” and “Mr. Groome shall think convenient.” Provision is also made for her unfortunate nephew, the younger Thomas Bantoft.

A rather unusual bequest appears in 1786 in the will of one J. Leggatt, who left “to the trustees of the Society of Protestant Dissenters in the parish of St. Nicholas” a “tenement” “for the use and habitation of the person or persons…employed as Door Keeper of the said meeting.” The Trustee William Alpes made a more personal request in his will: “I desire my very good friend Mr. Samuel Baxter of Ipswich… to preach my funeral sermon for which I give him two guineas of gold.”

The first Trustees were appointed on 14th February 1711, quite some time after the opening of the Meeting House – perhaps because of the long-running legal dispute with the builder (or “house carpenter”) Joseph Clark. Thomas Bantoft had died by this time and it was his sister, Elizabeth, along with Fairfax’s friend and colleague, Samuel Bury – two of his executors – who transferred ownership of the land and building to the Trustees. There were twenty of these plus the minister, Samuel Baxter. Of these, four – Edward Gaell, Robert Snelling, John May and Thomas Catchpole – had been signatories to the contract of 1699. The others had an interesting range of occupations. Samuel Parish was a linen draper, William Alpes and Thomas Woods were yeomen (farmers owning their own land), Henry Eades and Thomas Wilder were maltsters, John Hollborough was a woollen draper, John Jennings was a hosier, Samuel Burroughs was a tallow chandler, John Bumstead was a woolcomber, Thomas Bacon was a schoolmaster, James Smith was an ironmonger and Thomas Harper made chairs. There were also two more “Gents.” – Richard Girling and William Sparrow. Such was the variety of people who, along with their wives and families formed the congregation at the beginning of the 18th century.

Their wills show how closely intertwined and inter-related these leading families often were, and sometimes contain some rather charming personal details which don’t really have much to do with the Meeting House!. For example, William Alpes’s will contains the following: “I give and bequeath…unto the said Elizabeth my wife my ffeather-bedd as it stands in the parlour of my dwelling house which we usually lie upon together.”

3. The Contract and the Building

The Contract to build the Meeting House, signed on 5th August 1699 by six members of the congregation on the one hand and by the “house carpenter”, Joseph Clark, on the other, agreed the construction, “in good orderly and workmanlike manner” of “a good new strong and substantial house for a meeting place.” It was to “be in length sixtie foot, and in breadth fiftie foot” and it was to have “a double Roofe to be borne up in the middle with four good and substenciall Cullums.” It was to be in “Height one and twentyfoot from the floore to the Seelinge…” And this, of course, is what we still have today. According to tradition the “substenciall Cullums” are ship’s masts, but unfortunately there is no way of verifying this charming tale!

The Contract further stipulates that, “All the groundsells and ground-gyves for the floore of the said building shalbe of good oaken tymber, and all the rest to be built of good furr-red wood.” The walls were to be “Lathed without-side with good furr-red wood”, there were to be “two payr of good substanciall doores [there are actually ‘three-pair’!] and as many necessary girt windows four foot wide and six feet deepe to be all made of Redd wood furr…” Inexplicably this doesn’t include the three oval lunettes – high above the doors – which are original and which resemble those found in Christopher Wren’s London churches. According to the architect Keith Pert, the circular lunettes in the south wall may not be original and “were probably installed after 1900,” but even if that’s true I think there must always have been windows there.

The accounts, which also survive, show that the cost of basic construction was £256-14s-6d, although the final total was substantially more. A 17th-century, purpose-built, timber-framed Dissenters’ Meeting House in a near-pristine condition, the building is a rare survival, hence its Grade One listing. But the building has some further distinctive features that were not included in the Contract. The galleries, for example, occupying three sides of the interior, cost a further £96, to be paid in instalments. Glazing too, was extra, and neither pews nor pulpit are mentioned in the Contract. It is not surprising that the building took longer to erect than the two months allowed in the Contract, a delay that led to years of legal wrangling, and it must have been a rush to have it anything like ready for the opening service.

The pulpit is the central feature of the interior and is particularly fine. The woodcarving is characteristic of the late 17th-century and is in the style of Grinling Gibbons, to whom it was once attributed. This is now thought to be unlikely and the woodcarver is unknown. However, it is probably the work of someone who learned his skills with Gibbons and may well have come from his workshop. It would have been an expensive item and extra to the cost of the building. It may have been paid for by a wealthy benefactor, but there is no record of this. Other original fittings not mentioned in the Contract are the hexagonal clock – believed to be older than the building – and the Dutch brass chandelier, although the wrought-ironwork on which it now hangs probably dates from 1900.

Although there have been some changes to the building over the centuries, not least at the time of the major, though sympathetic, restoration in 1900, it remains substantially as it was when first opened. Daniel Defoe, himself a Dissenter, visited the Meeting House in the early 1720s and wrote of it in his ‘Tour Through England and Wales’, that, “it is as large and as fine a building of that kind as most on this side of England, and the inside the best finished of any I have seen, London not excepted.” Its interior arrangement is characteristic of Meeting Houses built by congregations in the Reformed Protestant tradition. The central, elevated pulpit emphasised that the reading and preaching of the Word of God was the most important aspect of worship. It is the preaching of the Word that is elevated rather than the preacher, whose religious status – at least in theory – was the same as that of anyone else in the congregation. The large central space in front of the pulpit is for a communion table (though not the present one) and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper – perhaps the next most important aspect of worship. The congregation still has four 17th and 18th-century silver porringers that were used for this, and formerly had two silver patens too. The porringers are two-handled silver cups, originally for use in private homes but donated to the Meeting House, and this tells us more about the congregation at that time.

One is inscribed “The gift of Mary Beaumont Jan 13th 1786”. She was the granddaughter of Thomas Bantoft and the daughter of Sarah Bantoft, who had married an apothecary named John Beaumont. Like other members of the congregation, Sarah and John also made a bequest – of £10, in their case – to the poor of the “Presbyterian Meeting House”. One of the other cups –the finest – bears the coat of arms of the Snelling family, who also gave the patens. They were prominent members of the Meeting House congregation. The letters ‘AL’ inscribed on the base may indicate that the actual donor was Alice Lawrence, the daughter of Trustee Robert Snelling. Her husband, Robert Lawrence was involved in responding to the needs of Huguenot refugees after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

The position of the communion table, ‘in the midst of the congregation’, is in stark contrast to the position of the altar in the traditional church arrangement. It emphasises that the Dissenters’ Lord’s Supper is most certainly not the Roman Catholic mass or the Anglican eucharist. It is not celebrated by a priest, and it is a simple meal in memory of Jesus at the Last Supper, shared by a congregation of spiritual equals – although the minister would usually preside. The bread and wine that are shared remain bread and wine! This positioning of the communion table, like that of the pulpit, was one of the ways in which the Meeting House was designed to express the beliefs and theology of a congregation of Protestant Dissenters.

Another is the absence of stained glass ‘picture windows’ (as they were called by their critics) or any other representation of human or supernatural beings, or even of animals, all of which would have been regarded as idolatrous. The carving on the pulpit portrays vegetable matter only. The windows are of plain glass, designed to offer no distraction to the worshipper and to allow the unmediated inflow of clear light. This represents the unmediated and direct relationship between God and the believer. The simplicity of this Puritan space, which doesn’t even contain a cross, was intended to both demonstrate and symbolise the purification of Christianity from what were seen as the corrupting accretions added by Roman Catholicism and retained by Anglicanism. The doves and cherubs over the external door frames are, importantly, outside the worship space. The winged cherub over the clock, with his piece of music, is not original and dates from 1799 when the first organ was installed in the gallery. Attitudes had mellowed by this time! When the Meeting House was opened, there would have been no music other than the unaccompanied singing of psalms, led from the reading desk by a precentor.

Although the arrangement of the seating on all sides of the building emphasises the nature of the congregation as a gathered community of spiritual equals, the box-pews did not in themselves have any particular theological significance. It did, though, mean that a family could have its own pew, complete with a lock as can still be seen on the doors of some of them! ‘Pew rent’ was a way of subscribing to the community as well as guaranteeing a seat! The central block of downstairs pews, although original, were rearranged in the 1900 restoration so that all the seats face the front. Originally they had seating on four sides, as those against the east and west walls still do. One of these has preserved a piece of the earlier white brick flooring. Before 1900 the pews extended right to the back of the building, but they were moved then to accommodate vestries, vestibules and the organ. The wooden parquet flooring dates from 1900.

The double door in the east wall was the original main entrance and the Meeting House was approached through the alleyway, once gated, from St. Nicholas Street. This concealment from public view, as it then was, was quite deliberate. It might also help to explain the building’s resemblance to a large private house. In the 17th-century Dissenters were often persecuted and proscribed so when they finally got to build their own Meeting Houses they were conscious that continued toleration could not be guaranteed. This also explains the spy-hole in the east door, which lines up with the alleyway. This was to watch out for intruders – whether it was a hostile mob or officials sent by an oppressive government. It was not an idle fear. Dissenters’ Meeting Houses were sometimes attacked. The most notable example was the destruction of Joseph Priestley’s New Meeting, along with his house and laboratory, by a ‘Church and King’ mob in Birmingham 1791. And although there is no record of the Ipswich congregation being disturbed in this way, they clearly felt it advisable to have the spy-hole.

4. The Trust Deed

Provision for the ownership of the Meeting House (or “Chapple”) and the associated “messuages and tenements”, to pass to a board of “twelve faithful Trustees out of the most considerable subscribers to the building” was made in a codicil to Thomas Bantoft’s will, dated 10th August 1705. In the meantime ownership was vested in his four executors. They were his sister Elizabeth Bantoft, his cousin Mary Bantoft, Samuel Bury, minister at Bury St. Edmunds, and Nathaniel Burnand, a “gentleman” of Harwich. In the event it was another seven years before the transfer took place, by which time only Elizabeth Bantoft and Samuel Bury were still alive and it was these two who are named “on the one part” in the “Indenture”, or Trust Deed, dated 14th February 1711. Twenty-one men are named as being “of the other part.” Since the document stipulates that the number of trustees “shall not consist of more than twenty” we might ask why twenty-one are named. Perhaps, as minister, Samuel Baxter had some sort of ex officio status.

The Deed also stated that the number of trustees was not to fall below nine and that when vacancies occurred then the remaining trustees were to appoint “four or more other the most prudent and substantive persons of sober life and conversation and good and honest repute.” Their responsibility was, basically, “the better ordering maintaining managing or disposing of the said Meeting House and the pewes and seats there…” The Trustee body was also to be responsible for “all sums of money”, including “rents and profits” deriving from the property and “the better and more effectual managing and discharging the several trusts in them reposed.” Interestingly the Trust Deed doesn’t actually stipulate that Trustees must be men, talking rather about “persons”, but there is no record of women becoming Trustees until the 1920s.

The Trust Deed gives the purpose of the Meeting House as being a “meeting place for the worship of Almighty God”, with no further doctrinal conditions and provisions. This makes it a so-called ‘Open Trust’ in that, apart from that single requirement, it allows for changes in theology, doctrine and belief. It was this ‘openness’ that allowed the congregation to change and develop its faith and practice as the years passed by. No doubt this liberalism was unintentional, the drafters of the Trust Deed not conceiving that beliefs might change radically – or even change at all! Nevertheless it was this ‘openness’ that paved the way for the congregation to make the move to Unitarianism, which it had done by the end of the 18th century, if not before. Quite a number of particularly Presbyterian congregations made the same shift at the same time.

The Trust Deed also said that the Meeting House was “for the people of the Presbyterian Congregation or persuasion”, but ‘Presbyterian’ is not really a doctrinal term and relates rather to organisation. In fact a full Presbyterian system had never been established in England, so as the congregations actually developed along independent lines, this provision in the Trust Deed simply ceased to be relevant. A Unitarian denomination did not exist at this time, not really coming into being until the 19th century. Indeed, the profession of Unitarianism remained technically illegal until the passing of the so-called Trinity Act in 1813, although many individuals and congregations had adopted it by this time.

Were there any indications of a Unitarian presence in Ipswich before this? Perhaps there were. An interesting figure in the 17th century was the wealthy Ipswich-born London businessman and philanthropist, Thomas Firmin. Although an Anglican, he belonged to the supporters of the Unitarian pioneer, John Biddle, who had suffered imprisonment for his beliefs during the Commonwealth. Firmin became a member of a group trying to promote Unitarian ideas within the Church of England through publishing the so-called ‘Unitarian Tracts’. He also supported the Huguenot refugees who fled France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a concern he seems to have shared with at least one of the Meeting House Trustees, namely John Groome. Firmin helped Huguenots to set up a silk manufacture (a speciality of theirs) in Ipswich, which may have led to contact with Thomas Bantoft who, as a mercer, would have dealt in this fine material. Apparently, Firmin’s generosity is said to have extended to help for the then Presbyterian congregation under John Fairfax when they were meeting in the hired Silent Street premises. However, as he died in 1697 it is unlikely that Firmin and his Unitarian beliefs had much to do with the building of the Meeting House two years later.

Joseph Priestley is also perhaps worth mentioning here. Better known today as a scientist, his chosen profession was actually the Dissenting ministry and he was to become the foremost Unitarian theologian of his day. As a young man, though, his first – unhappy – ministry was at Needham Market from 1755 to 1758. During this time his increasingly unorthodox views made him unpopular both with his congregation and with other ministers in the area. But one or two still made him welcome. One was the minister at the Ipswich Meeting House from 1737 to 1766, the biblical scholar Thomas Scott, who Priestley called “the most learned of my acquaintances…who was well-versed in the oriental languages, especially in Arabic.” This would seem to indicate that Priestley’s dawning Unitarianism – he had already moved from Arminianism to Arianism by this time – found a tolerant, even sympathetic, hearing at the Meeting House. Is has been said of Scott that “the fame of his best-selling verse translation of the Book of Job” matched “the skill with which he and his successors managed their members’ gradual transition to unorthodoxy” (Peter Bishop). It is certainly possible that Priestley was invited to preach in the Meeting House, pulpit exchanges being a common practice at this time, although sadly there is no firm evidence that he was. Even when his unorthodoxy wasn’t a problem with other congregations, Priestley’s speech impediment – a severe stutter – often was, and limited the number of invitations to preach that he received while he was in Suffolk.

5. The Fairfax Sermon

‘Primitiae Synagogae’, the sermon preached at the opening of Ipswich’s “New Erected Meeting-House” on 26th April 1700 was published, with a dedication to Sir Thomas Cuddon, “Chamberlain of the City of London”, in the same year. It was publication that ensured its survival. In the dedication, Fairfax said of Cuddon that “I dare not tell the World, especially without your leave, how much this mean offering is due to you.” Thomas Cuddon (1648-1702) belonged to an old and influential Suffolk family, but precisely why he warranted Farfax’s encomium I don’t know. The sermon itself took as its text Exodus chapter 20, verse 24 – “In all places where I record my Name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee” – and it sets out to establish that the Meeting House is such a place.

Initially he traces the history of places set aside for “holy, true worship” from “An Altar of Earth” to “The Tabernacle which Moses reared up in the Wilderness.” And of the need to provide such places Fairfax says, “For Reason and the Light of Nature doth certainly dictate this.” The place of reason in faith was to become increasingly important for the congregation, just as the “Light of Nature” was such an important feature of the building itself. Fairfax, translating the Old Testament Hebrew, calls Moses’ great tent in the wilderness “The Tabernacle of the Congregation”, then adds that this “may as properly be rendered The Tabernacle of Meeting.” Later he returns to this term in a statement that has been as relevant for later congregations as it was for Fairfax’s: “we are now in the Tabernacle of Meeting, where we meet not only one with another but all with God.” This is why it is a Meeting House.

In another memorable phrase Fairfax explains why the worship of an omnipresent God needs particular places to be set aside for it. Although “God’s Essential Presence is everywhere”, says Fairfax, “when he is said to be present with Men in one place more than another, this denotes a specialty of Presence.” This “specialty of Presence” is what worshippers in – and visitors to – the Meeting House have felt since that day in 1700. It is what might be called a sense of the numinous, a spiritual quality, something not so much intrinsic to the materials with which the Meeting House is built as something brought to it by the faith and worship of its continuing and continuous community.

Fairfax may have been a Dissenter but as a Presbyterian – hoping for a Reformed Church of England – he was a reluctant one and retained a reverence and respect for “those Stately, Magnificent and Sumptuous Structures, our public Churches”. Indeed, he lamented, “Had we the liberty of those places we should seek no other.” The Dissenters’ exclusion from the churches was not their choice, he said: “but these Doors being shut against us, it is our necessity…to Worship God as conveniently as we can in meaner places with a good Conscience.” But “meaner places” or not, Fairfax still congratulated his congregation for building, “this large, spacious Meeting-Place” and for having “adorned it both without and within.” “It is but reasonable”, he continued, “that an House of God, and his Solemn Service should equal if not exceed our own habitation.”

But what happened in the Meeting House was serious business and Fairfax made it clear that this was no place for unseemly levity: “Did we apprehend this, could we talk, or laugh, or indulge ourselves to sleep, or give liberty to wandring eyes, thoughts or affection.” When it came to worship, proper respect must be shown. “Could we think”, asks Fairfax, “that covering the Head under the Word Read or Preached, or sitting on our Seats at Prayer, or at Blessing were a becoming posture”? To what extent these strictures applied equally to men and women, I’m not sure, but I would have thought that women were expected to cover their hair, in accordance with I Corinthians 11, verse 5, “But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head”, ‘head’ also meaning her husband, along with Christ and God! It is possible that men and women actually sat separately at this time, as was the case in other Reformed Protestant churches, not to mention synagogues where, Fairfax said, the members of the “Jewish Church” were “bound to keep the Sabbath every week.” Physical resemblances between synagogues and Meeting Houses were not coincidental, as Fairfax’s title for his sermon suggests.

The reputed ‘wig-pegs’ that can still be found in a few of the Meeting House pews are a reminder that some men, at least, were wearing wigs, in accordance with current fashion in the 17th century. The ‘wig-pegs’ may have been for men’s hats too, of course, as worship required them to be bare-headed for much if not all of the time. There could be exceptions to some of these ‘rules’, though. as Fairfax conceded, entering the caveat, “unless the Body require it, and then God will have Mercy and not Sacrifice.” This was presumably a reference to ill-health and bodily infirmity.

Towards the close of the sermon, Fairfax draws some spiritual lessons from the building of the Meeting House: “Let us not satisfie ourselves that we have built this House of God, for his solemn worship…This is not our whole Duty, nay, ‘tis but a small part thereof. God expects that we prepare him another Habitation, even our hearts.” The purpose of the “material House” is the building of the “Spiritual House” in ourselves, which “Habitation” Christ will “Sanctifie and Beautifie” if “he enters into us and dwelleth in us.”

Fairfax closes with the injunction to be ready for God’s call and to beware of ignoring it: “Attend seriously and conscientiously on such means as through which God…doth ordinarily communicate his Spirit, and that is chiefly the Ministry of the Word.” He continues, “Take heed of shutting the Door of thy Heart against the Spirit…” and hear what God says. “Thus should we open the Door”, Fairfax declares, and warns, “but if we stop our Ear, harden our Heart, quench the Spirit, stifle its motions; What is this but to turn the Holy Ghost out of doors and to say to the Almighty, depart from us?” Rather we should “treat the Spirit of God kindly” so that “he will be with us, within us, and we shall be his Habitation.” Fairfax’s final words are an assurance of something greater than any physical house: “When this Synagogue which ye have built shall be demolished, and the Earthly house of the Tabernacle of our Bodies be dissolved, we shall have a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.”

The Fairfax Sermon gives us a clear insight into the faith and worship of the Meeting House congregation in April 1700, and it shows little evidence of Unitarianism. And yet the congregation was to become Unitarian within a century. I’m not going into that transition now, but there is one story, relating to a copy of the Fairfax Sermon, that points the way. It relates to a man called John Notcutt. The son of William Notcutt, the noted Independent (or Congregationalist) minister at Ipswich’s other Dissenting Meeting House, which had been opened in Tacket Street in 1720, John followed his father into the ministry. He became pastor at the Green Street Meeting House in Cambridge some time before 1740 and in 1741 he entertained perhaps the foremost Protestant Dissenter of the day, Philip Doddridge. However, despite this connection, Notcutt left Green Street soon afterwards under something of a cloud. When his successor, a man named Marshall, was appointed, it was said that he came “to a thorny field”. The hope was expressed that Marshall would “revive vital religion” in the congregation” and, as Doddridge put it, “retrieve their honour”. So what had gone wrong with John’s ministry at Green Street? What had gone wrong was that John Notcutt was a “Socinian” – that is to say, a Unitarian! John left the ministry and returned to Ipswich. A few years ago a copy of the Fairfax Sermon’ came to light with John Notcutt’s signature inside. It was presumably his personal copy. This seems to indicate that on his return to Ipswich in the 1740s John joined the Meeting House congregation, not his father’s. The minister at the time was Thomas Scott. As members of the Notcutt family were to be important figures at the Unitarian Meeting House for the next 260 years or so, we may assume that John Notcutt the “Socinian” found a welcome in the congregation there.

(CMR170424)

SOME SOURCES:

Peter Bishop, ‘The History of Ipswich: 1500 years of triumph and Disaster’, 1995.

G. R. Clarke, ‘The History and Description of the town of Ipswich’, 1830.

Daniel Defoe, ‘A Tour Through England and Wales’, 1724.

John Fairfax, ‘Primitiae Synagogae: A sermon preached at Ipswich, April 26, 1700. At the opening of a new-erected Meeting House’, 1700.

A. Phillip Hewett, ‘The Story of an Old Meeting House: A short history of St. Nicholas Old Meeting House, now called the Unitarian Meeting House, Friars Street, Ipswich.’ [1956].

S. A. Notcutt, Keith G. Pert, Barbara Cotgrove, ‘Reflections on an old Meeting House’, 1976.

Joseph Priestley, ‘Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestley to the year 1795. Written by himself’, 1809.

Cliff Reed, ‘A Suffolk Tabernacle: the Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House’, [1997].

Cliff Reed, ‘Priestley in Suffolk’, http://www.hibbert-assembly.org.uk

THANKS

To Linda King for her transcriptions of the Trust Deed and the Wills.