The Baker of Great Bardfield

In October 1861 this account of the persecution of John Blake and his family in Great Bardfield, Essex was written by one of his descendants:

“John Blake was a Baker residing at the village of Great Bardfield in Essex, and having, at the time my story begins (1793), a wife and five small children whom he was maintaining by dint of industry and great frugality in respectability and comfort. He is represented by those who knew him well as “Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord”.

The Village had obtained an unenviable notoriety in the surrounding neighbourhood for the profligacy of its inhabitants and was known, at a time not at all conspicuous for a high standard of public morality, as Wicked Bardfield.

The pious Baker viewed with pain the uncontrolled iniquity that surrounded him, and desiring as far as his humble abilities would allow to raise the standard of the gospel in the village he invited some itinerant Methodist preachers to hold services in his Bake Office which was licensed for the purpose in conformity with the law.

There on Sabbath days was a little band collected to hear the words of life and seated around the Bake Office upon the bins and flour sacks or perchance on some more convenient resting place provided for the occasion. Some of the inhabitants of Wicked Bardfield listened for the first time to the invitation of Mercy addressed to them by the self-denying labourers who “went about doing good”, and hesitated not through evil report and cowardly maltreatment to “Proclaim to sinners round, What a dear Saviour they had found”.

These irregular proceedings at the Bake Office, aroused the ire of the Parish Minister who conceived the Methodists as poachers on his preserve and forthwith took measures to oblige the Baker to discontinue the services. He formed a Committee consisting of two shopkeepers, a publican, a farrier who was also a Churchwarden and two farmers of the neighbourhood who entered on their work with businesslike precision and energy. The Committee in order to effect the ruin of the Baker advertising in the public newspapers for one of the same business to come and set up in opposition; and having obtained one, they supported him at a considerable expense, but the former baker making confessedly good bread etc they did not succeed according to their sanguine expectations. The Committee then attempted to engage the whole town and parish in a combination not to trade with the Baker. This scheme they devoutly hoped would completely starve the poor man and his family or compel him to renounce his judgement and conscience in matters of Religion. Accordingly a mutiny was actually drawn up by some persons and presented by the p-r-n for approbation proposing at the same time that it should be copied and stamped paper the next day and signed by themselves and as many as they could prevail upon to join them. In this nefarious deed they covenanted for themselves and their families, not to buy anything of the poor man under the penalty of ten shillings for every offence committed by a master tradesman or farmer and five shillings for every journeyman or labourer.

It does not appear that the foregoing was ever completely carried into effect but it was drawn up and they carved out its design as far as possible.

These means not succeeding a course of greater violence was pursued, a number of “lewd fellows of the baser sort” were instigated to attack the unoffending religionists and on Sunday 14th July 1793 the preachers on arriving at the Bake House at half past ten a.m. found a mob assembled round the door in a high state of excitement – crying “We have a good Church.” “You have no business here.” “The Gentlemen don’t like it etc etc”. One of the preachers replied “We don’t come here to oppose the Church. We only come to Worship God according to our conscience.” This only provoked greater wrath and fiercer cries on the part of the Mob who were armed with branches bludgeons and stones and seemed determined to murder the preachers, who on attempting to leave the house were seized by the rioters who threatened “to do for them”. It was with great difficulty they escaped back into the house and bolted the door. The Rioters remained all the afternoon and evening and declared frequently with the most horrid imprecations that they would not leave the place ‘til they got them out.

The preachers finding they were in a dangerous position and no Magistrate being in the neighbourhood they forwarded a letter by two friends who managed to get clear off with it requesting assistance from Bocking. In the meantime the mob surrounded the House pouring in through the windows in almost every direction showers of stones and some of them with such violence as to make deep indentations in the partitions opposite. The family who belonged to the House were in the greatest distress, the cries of five small children, frightened by the noise and the stones were so excessive that it was expected every moment that some of them would fall into fits. The distress of the Mother weeping floods of tears over her children is beyond all description. The compassionate father was driven to his wits ends to contrive some method of relieving them. He could not take them into any of the chambers for fear of them being killed by the stones. At length he removed the children into the farm putting the youngest into a crate of straw and covered them up. But even here the unmerciful savages disturbed them by knocking against the wall etc.

The mob sent frequent messages threatening to pull down or burn the House and at last a fire brand was brought for that purpose but at this crisis a Magistrate’s warrant arrived from Bocking directed to one of the Constables which after being delivered to him sorely against his will he dispersed the mob and the Ministers escaped under the protection of another Constable and reached the village of Weathersfield about midnight “Thanking God for their great Deliverance.”

The nature and extent of this riot having made a great sensation in the neighbourhood it was determined to bring the offenders to justice and accordingly a ringleader named Cole and seventeen others were tried before the Honourable Mr. Justice Lawrence at Chelmsford Assizes in the month of May 1794 and found guilty of rioting. Prosecutions were also established against three men and one woman for assaulting the preachers and other acts of violence and they were all found guilty and brought before the Court of King’s Bench for sentence. The Judge (The Right Honourable the Lord Kenyon) saying that the indictment should hang over their heads and that if they were ever guilty again of the like crime they would be indicted capitally and hanged. Lord Kenyon also informed the Bail “that they were very much mistaken if they supposed they were authorised in encouraging these riots and that by the Toleration Act they were as much open to punishment who disturbed a congregation of Methodists or Dissenters as those who might disturb the Church of England. The Recognisances were then taken in £200 each Defendant and their two Bail in £100 each.

Thus in the issue of three trials a great principle of Religious Liberty was successfully asserted. John Blake lived many years a humble and consistent Nonconformist not fearing to be prosecuted for righteousness sake. Two of the five small children still survive surrounded by numerous descendants who delight to hear from their life the history of the Persecution and Deliverance of John Blake “the Baker of Great Bardfield”.

L. Blake.
Great Yarmouth October 1861.”

Footnote:
In 1795 a pamphlet was published the front page of which reads:

The
Triumph of Religious Liberty
Over the
SPIRIT of Persecution:
An account of the TRIALS of several Persons,
For an outrageous and unprovoked
PERSECUTION
At Great Bardfield, in the County of Essex,
Before
The Honourable Mr. Justice Lawrence;
At Chelmsford Assizes, in the Month of May 1794.
Printed in the year, MDCCXCV.
Price Three – pence.

This pamphlet contained a full transcript of the trial in Chelmsford which concluded on May 17th 1794. At the end of the trial Mr. Justice Lawrence observed:

“I have only to say, that now after these prosecutions are over, I hope they will behave better. As there seems to be a desperate spirit of persecution in Bardfield, their behaving better for the future, will be the only thing to recommend them to the mercy of the Court”.

For the sentencing hearing in the Court of the King’s Bench (which took place on May 24th 1794) the defendants were brought from Newgate Jail where they had been held since the case concluded in Chelmsford. Affidavits were filed on behalf of the defendants in which they stated that they all had large families who would suffer if they were jailed.

Lord Kenyon, in passing sentence, stated that he was extremely sorry that it was not in his power to have “taken hold of those persons who were the instigators of the riots”. (In other words the Church of England Minister and others in Great Bardfield who had encouraged the attack on the Bake House.) He then fined the defendants as recorded in the report.

A note at the end of the pamphlet states that the profits from its sale would be applied “to defray the great expense unavoidably occasioned by the Law Suit: the decision of which undoubtedly is of the utmost importance to the Methodists and Dissenters”.