The fascinating history behind Abbey Hill United Reformed Church which is celebrating 375 years of reformed worship in Kenilworth

This year, Abbey Hill United Reformed Church is celebrating 375 years of reformed worship in Kenilworth.

Events have been planned to celebrate the landmark but sadly most of them have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Church manager Ivan Pointon records a detailed history of the church.

The Civil War broke out in 1642. During its early campaigns, Kenilworth formed a useful Royalist counterbalance to the Parliamentary stronghold of Warwick. Kenilworth was used by Charles on his advance to Edgehill in October 1642.

After the inconclusive battle of Edgehill, however, the Royalist garrison was withdrawn from Kenilworth on the approach of Lord Brooke (Robert Greville), owner of Warwick Castle and commander of parliamentary forces in Warwickshire. Kenilworth Castle was then garrisoned by parliamentary forces.

Kenilworth Parish Church of St Nicholas (in Abbey Fields) recorded: ‘There are bullet marks on the north wall from target practice and Cromwell's troops had used the church as a billet.’

The result of the battle of Naseby in June 1645, this time a decisive battle, was the annihilation of the Royalist army. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud had been beheaded at Tower Hill, London earlier in 1645 after being found guilty of high treason and the Anglican hierarchy removed.

Churches in England in 1645 (375 years ago) were no longer Anglican, they were Independent or Congregational (Reformed) without being subject or accountable to any royal or ecclesiastical assembly. “Every separate congregation of Christians, with its pastor and deacons, is a Church independent of all legislation but that of Christ."

Henry VIII, of course initiated the English Reformation separating the Church of England from papal authority. Mary I (Tudor) or Bloody Mary is best known for her aggressive attempt to reverse this English Reformation. During her five-year reign, the church of England returned to Roman Catholic jurisdiction and Mary had 283 religious dissenters burned at the stake under her Heresy Acts.

Many people fled from England during the reign of Bloody Mary and were sheltered by John Calvin.

John Calvin was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva. Under his and the city's protection, English refugees were able to form their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham. William Whittingham became a chaplain to Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick and eventually carried Calvin's ideas back to England. It is worth noting that our reformed roots, our growth is from Calvin and not Luther.

Elizabeth I re-established the English Protestant church and the church did modernise under Elizabeth I. However, Charles I desired to move the Church of England back to a more traditional and sacramental direction. Charles appointed William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury.

They initiated a series of changes which included restricting reformist preachers. Laud prosecuted those who opposed his reforms in the courts.

As an example, in 1637 William Prynne - after a year's imprisonment in the Tower of London, was sentenced to be imprisoned for life, to be fined £5,000, to be deprived of his Oxford University degree and to lose both his ears and be whipped. He was not allowed access for any family or friends, and not allowed use of pen and paper ever again.

An intense belief in the Bible, and this alone to be the basis of the authority of the Church, began to gather conviction in England. From this conviction emerged an emphasis on the preaching of that Word as one of the central functions of the Church, and the Bible accepted as the only source of moral and spiritual discipline in the Christian Church.

Independent Worship or Reformed Worship was the term employed to designate a class of Christians whose distinguishing tenet consisted in maintaining the independency of their Church government and discipline; or that each congregation meeting in one place is a complete Church in itself, having sufficient power to perform everything relating to its own concerns, without being subject or accountable to any other ecclesiastical assembly.

John Robinson (Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers), one of the founders of the Congregationalists in 1616, always contended "that every separate congregation of Christians, with its pastor and deacons, is a Church independent of all legislation but that of Christ," and all their Churches claimed the right of choosing their own pastors and deacons.

The present Abbey Hill United Reformed Church is the successor of the body which throughout four hundred years has upheld these principles.

This new movement; this new concept of Christianity with the accompanying moral and spiritual acceptance of the rules for Christian living direct from the Bible, continued the struggle through the reigns of James I and Charles I. It was the latter's insistence in the Divine Right of Kings, together with the intolerant zeal of Archbishop Laud, that were mainly responsible for the Civil War.

At this time Reformed worship can be said to have come to the forefront in direct opposition to the Monarchy.

The war ended with Cromwell and his Independent Party in power and from the outset the liturgy of the Church of England was suspended and members of the Anglican clergy were ejected from their livings. Cromwell and the Independents of the Army, advocated religious toleration.

In practice almost throughout the whole period, Anglicans, Catholics and Quakers suffered some persecution but the country generally and the Reformed Church enjoyed a greater measure of religious freedom than had previously been known. On September 29, 1658, one of the milestones of history was formulated, the meeting at the Savoy Palace. It was convened by Oliver Cromwell (who died before it met) and was a meeting of the representatives of our churches, which produced The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, the first historic statement of the fundamental principles and beliefs of the Reformed Church.

In a very short time after Oliver Cromwell’s death, anarchy reigned. General Monk marched south at the head of an army proclaiming for the restoration of the Monarchy, the Presbyterian Party joined forces with the Royalist factions within the House of Parliament, thus setting the seal to the restoration of the Monarchy. Charles II signed a declaration at Breda in which he appeared to approve religious toleration, he also accepted the Solemn League and Covenant, but soon after his accession he was to ask God's pardon for signing it and the copy was publicly burned at Whitehall.

Over the next 28 years various repressive acts were passed and once again the Reformed Church came face to face with persecution.

In 1661 the Corporation Act was designed to prevent anyone who refused to take the Anglican sacrament from holding public office.

In 1662 the Act of Uniformity directed that all clergymen and schoolmasters should use, and accept in full, everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer. Failure to conform meant immediate loss of their livings. The Act came into force on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24 and deprived some 1,800 Reformed ministers of their livings.

In 1664 the Conventicle Act placed a limit on the number of people meeting for worship in private dwelling houses, whose service did not conform to the pattern of the Book of Common Prayer.

Anyone convicted of the offence was liable to be fined or imprisoned.

In 1665, the Five Mile Act was enacted. This Act, together with that of the previous year, was aimed at Independency in the urban areas; it forbade any religious gathering within a five-mile distance of any town, except in the Parish Church. No minister or schoolmaster who had been ejected under the Act of Uniformity was allowed to go within five miles of the town or village from where he was deprived of his living on penalty of £40 fine.

Reformed worship, however, though outlawed, was now a political and constitutional fact and for the next two years the vigour with which the preceding acts were enforced was matched by the determined activity of the Reformed worshipers.

Parliament reassembled in May 1670 when an even more repressive Conventicle Act was passed and for the 12 months during which this Parliament sat, Reformed worshippers suffered more than ever for their beliefs. However, in 1672 a Declaration of Indulgence was enacted. On May 15 the King issued a declaration of indulgence which suspended the ecclesiastical penal laws and allowed freedom of public worship to all Protestant dissenters, Of Reformed Meetings licensed in Kenilworth in 1672 only two are recorded at the houses of William Wright and William Smith.

However, the almost complete freedom the Independents enjoyed under the Declaration lasted for barely a year, for it was cancelled in March 1673. The Licences for holding meetings, however, were not withdrawn until 1675, when once more a general persecution was begun.

However, in three years, much was accomplished to further the cause of Independency, many converts were won and in general a new stability emerged.

Many Reformed churches date their formation from the indulgence of 1672, and it is clear by this time that their separation from the established church was complete.

The strength acquired by the church during this period helped it to withstand the closing years of intolerance and persecution, and when one considers that the people of the church at this time were drawn in the main from the yeoman and trading classes, (the scale of fines was a crippling £40, £50 or £60 or confiscation of property, goods, etc., or imprisonment were quite commonplace), their courage and determination were beyond praise.

It can be said to have been a fight for survival in the fullest sense of the word.

With the accession of James II, the Independent churches profited by the King's desire to protect another persecuted group, his fellow Catholics. There is no record of any persecution after 1686. The Declaration of Indulgence of 4th April 1687 and the landing of William of Orange in November 1688, paved the way for complete religious freedom which was confirmed on the 24th May 1689, when the Act of Toleration was passed.

The effect of these repressive Acts locally in Kenilworth:

- In 1662 the congregationalist minister William Maddocks was ejected from the Parish Church of St. Nicholas under the Act of Uniformity.

- If you find Snelson's farm on an ordnance survey map at Banner Hill on Rouncil Lane, the map is marked behind the farm buildings, "Gospel Oak". Whilst its site is under five miles from St Nicholas Church, it would in those days be quite a remote area. Maddocks probably lived and continued preaching at that farm after his banishment to comply with the Five Mile Act 1665.

- Records show, at the County Quarter Sessions Epiphany 1671, Samuel Smith and widow Read of Kenilworth were presented for keeping a ‘conventicle (non-Anglican religious assembly) of more than five people’ in Smith's house.

The first evidence we see of a regular registered congregation of Independents in Kenilworth was in 1692 when meetings were registered in the barn of Moses Robinson and the minister was William Tong.

Examples of two more early meeting places registered at the County Court, the Warwickshire and Coventry Quarter Sessions:

- In 1705 the house of John Arlidge had been registered for independent religious assembly.

- And finally, in 1706 The meeting house on Rosemary Hill had been registered. So, the first church building after the repressive acts, a building for exclusive Reformed religious use, 314 years ago was on Rosemary Hill – now the Priory theatre and the minister was Samuel Turton.

The Church Buildings on Abbey Hill

The opening of the Old Barn in June, 1787, was one of the great events in the Church's history. It was a beautiful site on the hill, with fields all round, but these early worshipers had no easy time. The whole village is said to have been greatly excited and filled with hatred against them.

Though the Old Barn was registered according to law, tumults frequently took place, and among many methods taken to disturb the worship and annoy the people, a wasps’ nest was procured and laid in the passage leading to the meeting. " Often were the ministers insulted while they were preaching.

Some of the disturbers were taken before the magistrates. Frequently was the door fastened outside to prevent the congregation from separating, tradesmen lost-their customers, servants their employment, and other petty acts of annoyance and persecution were adopted to hinder the progress of the Reformed Church. Rev. Josiah Corrie, must have been the central figure in Kenilworth Nonconformity in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

This period of service, the longest in the record of Abbey Hill Church, covers the time when the Congregationalists in the Old Meeting House on Rosemary Hill moved to the Old Barn. In 1797 with no settled pastor there was a partial return of the congregation to the Old Meeting House on Rosemary Hill.

The Congregationalists passed through various changes, and at one time assembled for worship in a room at the lower part of the town, encouraged by an excellent lady—Mrs. Lunt—and by the neighbouring ministers, a site of ground near to the Old Barn was procured, on which to erect a chapel.

After meeting in an Old Barn to meeting in a properly constructed chapel was a great step. The foundation stone of this chapel (now used as the schoolroom) was laid by the Rev. John Sibree, of Coventry, on Tuesday 25th of November, 1828. On the 14th July, 1829, the chapel was publicly opened. This chapel had a gallery at the back, and provided sitting accommodation for about 300

persons.

The foundation stone of the present chapel was laid by, Mr. Alfred Keep, of Edgbaston, on August 6, 1872, and on Monday, June 9, 1873, the opening services were held, when the sermon was preached by the Rev. A. Raleigh, D.D., of London. The seating accommodation in the new chapel was for nearly 500.