Being a Dissenter in Barlick in the early 16th century wasn't a comfortable option. The Ecclesiastical Courts were very powerful and persecuted them as heretics which could mean the death penalty. They held their meetings in private houses or out in the open air in remote locations with lookouts posted to warn of any interference. One interesting consequence of this was that they didn't use music or singing as part of the service because this would attract attention. Even when they were legalised and had their own church the Baptists kept to this rule until 1718 when Alvery Jackson was appointed Pastor and preached a sermon in favour of singing in the service. One problem was that there was a dearth of hymn books but Alvery remedied this by producing a song book and writing 42 hymns himself.
Lewis is of the opinion that the Baptists belong to the oldest thread of Dissent and in earlier times were known as Anabaptists, Mennonites and Waldenses. These sects were Europe wide and part of the old reaction against the Church of Rome. In Henry VIII's time they were usually called Anabaptists and were persecuted, many being burned as heretics. We have no record of burnings in Barlick but even so, being a Dissenter was a dangerous course. This was true right through the Reformation of the 16th century. Even though divorced from Rome after 1536 the official religion still followed the Catholic liturgy and reform proceeded slowly from 1534 onwards with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the introduction of the Great Bible in English and eventually in 1611 with the King James Bible.
This wasn't clear at the time, Barlick's dissenters never knew quite which way the wind was blowing and had to keep a low profile. When Henry died in 1547 his son Edward VI was a strong Protestant and gave some respite until 1553 when Catholic Mary took the throne and reversed all the reforms unleashing a savage attack on the Dissenters. This must have been a very worrying time for the Barlickers. However, in 1558 Mary died and Elizabeth came to the throne. Her policy was one of tolerance and things must have improved in the town. Though still technically illegal, dissent could be pursued, not quite in public but certainly with less secrecy. Church attendance was still compulsory and was reinforced by the Act of Supremacy in 1558. Official toleration didn't come until the passing of the Toleration Act of 1689 but there must have been quite a bit of freedom in Barlick because in 1661 three members of the Baptist Church in Barlick held property in Walmsgate which was to become the chapel. There were still intermittent bursts of persecution, one in particular was the Conventicle Act of 1664 which aimed at the suppression of all Non-conformists. Lewis reports that sometimes during the service the preacher had to escape through 'a convenient exit behind the pulpit' and the congregation scattered. There are records of local preachers being arrested and imprisoned in York Castle. In 1689 the Act of Toleration was passed and at last dissent became lawful. The Walmsgate chapel was one of the first meeting houses in the country to register as a fully fledged centre for non-conformist worship. The long battles were over and our Old Barlickers could worship in total freedom. The question I ask myself is how they managed to endure the fight for their rights?
As we have noted many times, there's something different about Barlick. Partly due to being isolated from main roads, partly because of inward migration and almost certainly by being remote from the law-makers in London in the days when the North West of England was almost the Wild West. It's no accident that the Guild System never thrived here, this was one of the factors that encouraged the domestic textile trade, no regulation by wealthy merchants. As early as the 12th century, when the Cistercian monks from Fountains Abbey were trying to establish the monastery they complained about the unruly inhabitants who objected to being evicted from their land and having the ancient Saxon church destroyed. As late as the 1930s Barlick was a hotbed of industrial protest and one of the first places in the country to have a local Communist Party. All these things are evidence of independent thought and a reluctance to follow the main stream. I see the history of Dissent in Barlick as being yet another piece of evidence for something quite unique.
We can see this today in our largely unspoiled townscape. The extraordinary way our small independent shops have survived despite the onslaught of big business, in particular the revolution in retailing of the supermarkets. This isn't just a matter of blinkered local pride, overseas visitors realise immediately that we have something special. I know that three articles on the rise of dissent won't please everyone but if we are going to keep what we have we must take the trouble to understand how we got to where we are now. The free-thinking Barlickers who survived the Black Death, stuck to the town and eventually prospered gave us the entrepreneurs of the cotton industry that meant 14 steam mills, 25,000 looms and the profits that paid for the modernisation of the town. Again, it's no accident that many of these enterprising men and women were Dissenters.
When we take the trouble to unpick the rich tapestry of Barlick history we get threads like Dissent and this is just one element in the way our ancestors thought and acted. We live in an increasingly uniform age where even the High Streets have the same chain store brands above the doors all over the country. We don't have to endure the same dangers that the Dissenters had to cope with so there is less of a barrier to thinking independently. Please give this one thread some thought and realise that if we want to keep our lovely little town as it is we might occasionally have to stand up and speak out. Being independently minded has served us well in the past, there's no reason why it shouldn't do so in the future. Pick your battles and fight them, if nothing else it will be interesting!
How much did Dissent contribute to this scene?
