Rev. John
Berridge – the Gospel Pedlar (1716-1793)
Rev. John Berridge helped put
Everton on the 18th century map. As a writer, divine and famous preacher in the
Evangelical Movement he was a contemporary of John Wesley, the Methodist
minister. He also played a significant role in the spread of the Non-Conformist
church in Bedfordshire and surrounding counties. After a spell in Stapleford,
near Cambridge, Clare College appointed him as the vicar of St. Mary's in 1755.
Until he moved into the vicarage, he appointed the Rev. Jones of Bolnhurst as
his supply for six months. Rev. Berridge had agreed to preach in St. Mary's on
the first Sunday of every month. This allowed Rev. Jones to return to
Bolnhurst, unless he could not make it due to ill health, bad weather or such.
Berridge agreed to stay at the vicarage only a night or so but, according to
Jones, he "came over often, stayed
weeks together, sometimes longer." This was
accounted for by his poor health. As a result, he stayed most of the winter and
spring. This unexpected turn of events caused problems for Rev. Jones as Mrs
Hall, his housekeeper, and Godwick, his servant, had to do lots of extra work
when Berridge was in residence. This was work which they had not been taken on
to do and for which they probably demanded extra pay. In Rev. Jones’ correspondence with the Bishop of Ely he stated
that
“...I
think I can truly declare that during my continuance at Everton, I discharged
my duty honestly, with care, diligence and prudence, to the best of my power. I am very sure that this
was the character given of me by the inhabitants and neighbourhood, as far at
least as I could hear, whilst I was there.
…Had
not Mr. B. raised a disturbance; acted hastily & I conceive in a very
imprudent and unfriendly manner, busied himself to a degree of rashness and
impertinence, to me surprising, and to others scarce inconceivable; done injury
and even violence, or excited and promoted both, to private characters and
every other way in his power (as I have been credibly informed) in a kind of
maddish zeal, or I know what in what other style to express it, attempted to
infuse very wrong suggestions into people's minds at and about Everton and
elsewhere, since I left the place...“
(Dr Williams's Trust, London, Jones
39.B.24)
According to the Clare College
history, Berridge suffered similar set backs in Everton to those he had
experienced in Stapleford. This was until what he described as his "conversion." These set backs must
have included his disagreements with Rev. Jones. One witness reported that
Berridge said that he had been blind for upwards of forty years. One day, after a
fortnight of considering,
fasting and praying
“
he was
sitting alone in his
parlour, he heard on a sudden, a strong voice like a thunder uttering these
words, CEASE FROM THINE OWN WORKS. From that instant he resolved to take
another course and did and doth still continue it. He then destroyed all his written sermons,... took to extempore
preaching, trusting entirely to the Spirit. ...introduced a monthly communion,
to which great numbers of his auditors from all parts resorted. There
were one Sunday, he said, about 270 Communicants. Mr J. Wesley preached there
lately (upon Mr Berridge going to preach before the University of Cambridge)
and had a large communion."
(Dr
Williams's Trust, Jones 39.B.24)
Nigel Pibworth, in his fascinating biography of Berridge and the
18th century growth of the Methodist church, commented that, from that time,
St. Mary's Church in Everton was crowded on Sundays. People came from miles
around to hear the gospel preacher. The parish at the time was estimated to
have a population of about 250 but, as shall be seen, Berridge's popularity
attracted congregations of many thousands on weekends! Whilst it might have
provided some locals with extra income from renting accommodation for the
visitors, most visitors walked or rode there and back in a day.
“They
would bring their meals and during the fine weather would eat in the open air.
The vicarage was always available for the visitors, as was the meadow for their
horses.“
(Ibid.)
Insight into Berridge's life
once he had re-established himself in the parish was provided by the history of
Clare College. Berridge, it was said,
"never spared himself - for twenty years after his
entry to Clare he had consistently worked for some fifteen hours a day - but
after his conversion his activities were often prodigious, though doubtless
easier because more varied and more physical. In an
itinerary that used to lead him throughout five counties, and was repeated for
over twenty years, he would preach on an average ten to twelve sermons a week,
and frequently ride
a hundred miles. Indeed, his tall stature, robust
frame, strong voice, natural wit and cheerfulness, and marked common sense
combine with his habit of rural riding to make us think of him as a kind of
evangelical Cobett, but much more trustworthy and equable than
that certainly greater
man. In the single year following his conversion he was visited "by
a thousand different persons under serious impressions, many of whom found that
his purse was as open as his heart
though not so large." However, it was not so small neither, as Shakespeare
might put it, for at home his tables were served with a cold collation for his
numerous hearers, who came from far on Sabbaths, and his field and stable open
for their horses. Abroad houses and barns were rented, lay-preachers
maintained, and his own travelling expenses disbursed by himself. Cottagers
were always gainers by his company. He invariably left a half-crown for the
homely provision of the day, and during his itineraries it actually cost
him five hundred pounds in this single article of expenditure."
('Clare College 1326 -1926', CUP 1928,
pp.62-4)
In Fowler's 'History of
Gamlingay,' there is an eye-witness account of one of Berridge's sermons on
Sunday, May 25th 1758 which is loosely based on a report given to John Wesley.
(Fowler, E.J. (1935), 'The History of Gamlingay,' Fowler Bros. Gamlingay, p.7)
Pibworth's biography of Berridge also includes details of the same events. A
Mrs and Mr Blackwell of Lewisham were staying in Everton at the vicarage and
reported their experiences to John Wesley. His journal details their
correspondence. Unable to attend Berridge's seven o'clock service, Mrs Blackwell
reported that her husband 'observed
several fainting and crying out while Mr Berridge was preaching.' At the service later that morning she
“heard
many cry out, especially children, whose agonies were amazing. One of the
eldest, a girl ten or twelve years old, was full in my view, in violent
contortions of the body, and weeping aloud, I think incessantly during the
whole service. And several much younger children were in Mr Blackwell's view,
agonizing as this did.“
(Curnock, N.
(1938), 'Journal of John Wesley', vol.4, London, p.321)
She describes the afternoon
meeting as equally crowded. The building was packed to the extent that people
were crowded around Berridge in the pulpit and the windows 'were filled within and without.' Although Berridge was unwell, his
voice was for the most part distinguishable in the midst of all the outcries.
She notes that there were three times more men than women and that many of the
hearers had come from other towns and villages in the area. Thirty had come
from thirteen miles away, having set off at two in the morning. Berridge's text
was 2 Timothy 3:5: 'Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.'
Mrs Blackwell writes,
'The presence of God really filled the place.
And while poor sinners felt the sentence of death in their souls, what sounds
of distress did I hear! The greatest number of them who cried or fell were men;
but some of women, and several children, felt the power of the same almighty
Spirit, and seemed just sinking into hell. This occasioned a mixture of various
sounds, some shrieking, some roaring aloud. The most general was a loud
breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life. And indeed
almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter
anguish. great numbers wept without any noise; others fell down as dead; some
sinking in silence, some with extreme noise and violent agitation. I stood on
the pew-seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh,
healthy countryman. But in a moment, while he seemed to think of nothing less,
down he dropped, with a violence inconceivable. The adjoining pews seemed shook
with his fall. I heard afterwards the stamping of his feet, ready to break the
boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew. Among several
that were struck down in the next pew was a girl who was as violently seized as
him. When he fell, Blackwell and I felt our souls thrilled with a momentary
dread; as when one man is killed by a cannon-ball, another often feels the wind
of it. Among the children who felt the arrows of the Almighty I saw a sturdy
boy, about eight years old, who roared above his fellows, and seemed in his
agony, to struggle with the strength of a grown man. His face was red as scarlet;
and almost all on whom God laid his hand turned either very red or almost
black.'
(Ibid. p.318)
These are the
first few pages of Bernard O’Connor’s ‘Rev. John Berridge – the Vicar of
Everton, Bedfordshire’. Copies can be obtained for £5.00 (excl. P&P) from
St Mary’s Church warden or fquirk202@aol.com
Berridge,
John (1717–1793), Church of England
clergyman, was born on 1 March 1717 at Kingston-on-Soar,
Nottinghamshire, the eldest son of John Berridge (b. 1686), yeoman, a
substantial farmer and grazier, and his wife, Sarah (née Hathwaite), of
Nottingham. He received initial education in Nottingham, but, having shown
himself to be inept at farming, he was sent to Cambridge, where he matriculated
in 1735; he entered Clare College on 12 June as Lord Exeter scholar (1735–9)
and Freeman scholar; he graduated BA in 1739 and proceeded MA in 1742. Berridge
was elected an Exeter fellow of his college in 1740, and a Diggons fellow in
1743; he became a foundation fellow in 1748, and continued to reside at Clare
until 1757, usually reading fifteen hours a day. He vacated his fellowship on 1
June 1764.
Berridge was well known in the university as a scholar of distinction, with an
entertaining wit. He was, however, inclined to rely for salvation on a Socinian
combination of good works and faith, and for at least ten years he gave up
private devotions altogether. Nevertheless on 10 March 1745 he was made deacon,
on the title of his fellowship, at Buckden, Huntingdonshire, by the bishop of
Lincoln (Bishop Thomas), and on 9 June he was ordained priest. From 1750 to
1755 he served as curate at Stapleford, near Cambridge, riding out from
college. Believing that he had had no beneficial effect, spiritual or moral, on
the parishioners, he resigned. Nevertheless he soon took the college living of Everton, Bedfordshire (with Tetworth, Huntingdonshire), to
which he was instituted on 1 July 1755. He continued to live in college,
however, and employed John Jones (1700–1770), a liberal clergyman, as resident
curate. Following domestic disagreement, Jones resigned: an episode, hitherto
overlooked, which may have had an important bearing on the degree and nature of
Jones's adverse comments on Berridge's character both then and later.
Not long afterwards (apparently in December 1757), while reading his Bible, Berridge had a vivid experience of spiritual rebirth,
which amounted to a classic ‘evangelical’ conversion. The altered emphases of
his sermons soon bore fruit locally and by 1759 Berridge was itinerating widely
in surrounding villages, preaching effectively to country people in field and
barn, regardless of parochial boundaries, and sometimes inducing physical
convulsions among his hearers. With Berridge emphasizing justification by faith
alone, not only in rural but in university sermons (1759), the master of
Corpus, Dr John Green, began printing lengthy refutations (1760). Archbishop
Secker required Green to desist. Bishop Thomas, however, remonstrated with
Berridge; but the indirect influence of Berridge's former college friend,
Thomas Pitt (later Lord Camelford), effectively deterred the bishop from
further opposition.
Although tall, with a direct manner and strong voice, Berridge had suffered
from an asthmatic condition since early manhood. After nine years of preaching
constantly on mid-week circuits, increasingly far afield, from 1768 to 1773 he
was too unwell to itinerate. Moreover he had come to believe that his Arminian
understanding of the gospel was less than fully scriptural. He became a
convinced Calvinist, explaining his change of view in the relatively simple
language of The Christian World Unmasked (1773). John
Fletcher of Madeley claimed, in his learned Fifth Check to
Antinomianism, to find high Calvinist beliefs in Berridge's book, but
this view was not generally accepted. Berridge's changed understanding of
scripture had been marked incidentally by his appointment, on Lady Huntingdon's
recommendation (1768), as chaplain to the eleventh earl of Buchan.
As the years went by congregations at Everton began
to dwindle; but after an improvement in Berridge's health, and the appointment,
in 1782, of a good curate, Richard Whittingham (subsequently Berridge's first
biographer) the church filled again. Moreover Berridge resumed annual visits to
London, where he preached to large numbers at Whitefield's Tabernacle (the
customary likeness of Berridge shows him preaching from its pulpit) and
elsewhere. By early 1793, however, he was once more unable to travel and,
overcome at last by asthmatic illness, he died at his vicarage in Everton on 22 January. Charles Simeon of Cambridge
preached a funeral sermon to large numbers, before his burial on 27 January in Everton churchyard, where a tombstone with Berridge's own
striking inscription, including ‘Reader, art thou born again?’, remains.
Berridge was one of the more remarkable leaders of the evangelical revival. Not
only was he among the most gifted intellectually; he was an effective teacher
of the relatively uneducated, to whom he devoted his mature ministry. At the
same time he was a friend of such notables as Henry Venn, John Wesley, George
Whitefield, John Thornton, Lady Huntingdon, and Charles Simeon. Berridge's
sense of humour, which occasionally seemed carried to excess, and his use of
homely language, appealed to many hearers, not least to readers of his
writings, and those who sang his hymns. He remained unmarried because he felt,
after due consideration, that bachelorhood was more suitable for those called
to a roving ministry. In 1759 John Wesley wrote of Berridge that he was ‘one of
the most simple as well as one of the most sensible men’ (Telford, 4.58).
J. S. Reynolds
Sources
N.
R. Pibworth, The gospel pedlar (1987) · S. A. Beveridge, The story of
the Beveridge families of England and Scotland (1923) · T. M. Blagg and F.
A. Wadsworth, eds., Abstracts of Nottinghamshire marriage licences, 2,
British RS, 60 (1935) · W. J. Harrison and A. H. Lloyd, Notes on the
masters, fellows, scholars and exhibitioners of Clare College, Cambridge
(1953) · ‘The late Rev. John Berridge’, Evangelical Magazine, 1
(1793), 8–20 · R. Whittingham, ed., Works of the Rev. John Berridge, with
memoir, 2nd edn, 1864 (1838) · C. H. E. Smyth, Simeon and church order
(1940) · J. C. Ryle, The Christian leaders of the last century (1869) ·
M. L. Loane, Cambridge and the evangelical succession (1952) · A. S.
Wood, ‘John Berridge’, Evangelical Library Bulletin, 24 (1960), 2–4 ·
F. W. B. Bullock, Evangelical conversion in Great Britain, 1696–1845
(1959), 95–9 · E. Walker, ‘John Berridge’, Bedfordshire Magazine, 4
(1953–4), 245–8 · The letters of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. J. Telford, 4
(1931), 58 · will, proved, archdeaconry court of Huntingdon, 29 Jan 1793
Archives
JRL, corresp. | DWL,
John Jones MS 39.B.24
Likenesses
J.
Ogborne, stipple, pubd 1788, BM, NPG · J. Ogborne, engraving, 1792, repro. in Ryle, Christian
leaders, p. 216 · engraving, repro. in Smyth, Simeon and church order,
p. 180 · engraving, repro. in Whittingham, ed., Works of the Rev. John
Berridge, frontispiece · line engraving, BM, NPG; repro. in Gospel Magazine (1774)
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© Oxford
University Press 2004–5 |
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J. S. Reynolds, ‘Berridge,
John (1717–1793)’, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2258,
accessed 19 Nov 2005] John Berridge
(1717–1793): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2258 |
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