I CHAPTER XIX WESLEYANISM IN CORNWALL KNOW it is commonly said that the Cornish people were heathens and savages before Mr. Wesley came and converted them; but this seems a rash and most inaccurate statement. When Wesley came on his mission, he found an impassioned, impressionable Celtic people, full of zeal and enthusiasm for Christianity, which qualities the Church of England in the Georgian era knew not how to utilise. The sad lack of adaptability, of elasticity, which was so characteristic of the Church in those days of ecclesiastical slumber and inertia, was Wesley's opportunity. He found a vent for that repressed pent-up Celtic zeal and enthusiasm in his Wesleyan Society. To say that Cornish people were little removed from brute beasts at the time of Wesley's visit is, it seems to me, to ignore certain facts which are beyond controversy and which impel the impartially minded to think otherwise. As the Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma points out in his Church History of Cornwall, before Mr. Wesley came, Christianity had been established in Cornwall for about a thousand years, in fact, the continuous Christianity of the county is older than that of any other county in England. The little literature they possessed in their wild old Celtic tongue (which was only just expiring at the time of Wesley's visits) was almost entirely Christian. It was the gospel story set in rude Celtic verse. Christianity was almost the sole aim of the Cornish muse. The national drama was entirely Christian. No ballad of battle, and only one-a coarse and apparently modern one-of love, has survived of Cornish poetry. Their songs were all of Christ and Christ crucified. The whole culture of the race was Christian. Yet we are told to believe that these men, born and bred in such an atmosphere, with such deep religious traditional memories extending backwards for hundreds of years, were heathens and savages. I for one do not believe it. Still it is interesting to notice how ingrained was this belief even so far back as the time of Carew. He says that the first inhabitants or aborigines were "huge of body, rough of living, and savage of conditions"; but this is, no doubt, an exaggerated account of the ancient Damnonii. But as Carew translates into vigorous English some Latin lines on the subject, sent to him by "My particular kind friend, and generally well-deserving countryman, Mr. Camden," I think they are worth repeating : "This was the Titans' haunt, but with No plenty did abound, Whom beasts' raw hides for clothing served, For drink the bleeding wound: Cups, hollow trees; their lodging, dens, Their beds, brakes, palour rocks; Prey for their food; rapine for lust; Their empire, force; their courage, rage; Combat, their death; brambles, their grave; The earth groaned at the harms Of these mount-harboured monsters; but Chief, foyson had, and dire dismay, And sorest fury prest, Thee, Cornwall, that with utmost bound Of Zephyr art possesst." 1 Even to this day many Cornishmen are titanic in aspect, huge in structure, giant-like in appearance. It was at St. Ives that the Methodist Society was first started, and by Charles Wesley, not John. Charles Wesley at first received the bitterest opposition from the St. Ives rough fishermen and miners. The meeting-house was attacked, the windows smashed, the seats broken to pieces. The magistrates also joined in the opposition to the Methodists. They went by the nickname of "Canoruns," and the usual way of persecuting them was for the magistrates to issue warrants to have them taken by the pressgang as "able-bodied men, who had no lawful calling or sufficient maintenance." He, however, persisted in preaching, and at last a division arose among the people, and so the followers of the preacher claimed the victory. Then John Wesley went down to Cornwall to reap what Charles had sown, and 1 Carew's Survey of Cornwall, by Tonkin and Dunstanville, London, 1811, page 155. DULL CHURCH SERVICES 197 he repeated his visits thirty-one times, almost year by year from 1743. On his first visit he records: "All were quiet and attentive. As we were going to church at eleven, a large company at the market-place welcomed us with a loud huzza wit as harmless as the ditty sung under my window (composed, one assured me, by a gentlewoman of their own town) : "Charles Wesley is come to town, To try if he can pull the churches down." " The turning-point in his favour was at Gwennap Pit, for there John Wesley first won a real hold over the people of Cornwall. The work spread over the county. The miners brought it to almost every mining village, and the warmhearted Cornish folk took to it with characteristic Celtic enthusiasm. Mr. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, in reply to the question, "Why was this sudden change? gives five great causes that aided the sudden spread of Methodism and its remarkable permanence in Cornwall. They are worth briefly epitomising : 66 1. "The dullness of the Church services in the Georgian period." In other words, then was the time of the four D's "-dreariness, dolefulness, deadness, dullness. These reigned supreme in the Cornish churches. The people did not join in the service, and were not wanted to do so. The churches were locked up all the week, except for an occasional funeral on weekdays. A friend of mine who told me, heard Bishop Wilkinson, when Bishop of Truro, once say at a public meeting when speaking of the former apathy of the Church in Cornwall, that in those days the Church was "wrapped in the graveclothes of indifference ❞—an expression which seems just to hit off tersely the truth of the matter. Readers of Gibbon, Wesley's contemporary, will remember how, in his autobiography, the great historian sarcastically criticises "the gentlemanly indifference of the Church of England,” and ironically remarks that in early life he too had once thought of enjoying "the fat slumbers of the Church." Jane Austen, in speaking of Mr. Lefroy, who was married to her niece, declares that when he was ordained the only questions he was asked by his Bishop were if he was the son of Mrs. Lefroy of Ashe, and secondly if he had married Miss Austen. |