was known to spend six hours at a time in intercession. Robert Key at Saham Tony in 1832 won over a young woman who converted her brother, Robert Eaglen, who, eighteen years later at Colchester, proved so decisive a factor in the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
The Times of the 27th of December 1830, referring to the disaffected state of the southern counties, said: “The present population must be provided for in body and spirit on more liberal and Christian principles, or the whole mass of labourers will start into legions of banditti-banditti less criminal than those who have made them so, and who by a just and fearful retribution will soon become their victims.” These were the classes the Primitive Methodists tried to reach, and in doing so they found themselves between two fires. On the one hand there was the mob violence that often amounted to sheer ruiiianism, especially in Wessex and the home-counties. On the other hand there was legal persecution all over the country, and the preachers suffered many things from the hands of rural clergy and county magistrates. There are a score of cases of serious imprisonment, and a countless number of arrests and temporary detention. Local preachers received notice to quit their holdings, labourers were discharged, those who opened their cottages for meetings were evicted, and to show any hospitality to a travelling preacher was to risk the loss of home and employment. But the spirit of the evangelists was unquenchable.
At the Conference of 1842 both Clowes and Bourne became supernumeraries with a pension of £25 a year each. Clowes, indeed, had been free from circuit work since 1827, and he continued to pray and preach as he was able till his death in March 1851. Bourne, who worked at his trade more or less all through life, spent his last ten years in advocating the temperance cause; he died in October 1852. The years 1842-1853 mark a transition period in the history of Primitive Methodism. It was John Flesher who chiefly guided the movement from a loosely jointed Home Missionary Organization on to the lines of a real Connexionalism. One of the first steps was to move the Book Room and the meeting place of the executive committee from Bemersley to London. Soon after came the gradual process by which the circuits handed over their mission-work to a central Connexional Committee. The removal to London was proof that the leaders were alive to the necessity of grappling with the rapid growth of towns and cities, and that the Connexion, at first mainly a rural movement, had also urban work to accomplish. The famous Hull circuit long retained a number of powerful branches, a survival of the first period, but by 1853 it had come into line with what was by that time regarded as the normal organization.
The period 1853–1885 (where typical names are W. and S. Antliff, Thomas Bateman and Henry Hodge) finds Primitive Methodism as a Connexion of federated districts, a unity which may be described as mechanical rather than organic. The districts between 1853 and 1873 were ten in number, Tunstall, Nottingham, Hull, Sunderland, Norwich, Manchester, Brinkworth, Leeds, Bristol and London. Conference-the supreme assembly-was a very jealously guarded preserve, being attainable only to preachers who had travelled 18 and superintended 12 years, and to laymen who had been members 12 and officials 10 years. This exclusiveness naturally strengthened the popularity and power of the districts, where energy and talent found a scope elsewhere denied. Thus Hull district inaugurated a bold policy of chapel-buildings; Norwich that of a foreign mission; Sunderland and Manchester the ideal of a better educated ministry, Sunderland institute being opened in 1868; Nottingham district founded a middle-class school; Leeds promoted a union of Sunday-schools, and the placing of chapel property on a better financial footing. The period as a whole had some anxious moments; emigration to the gold-fields and the strife which afflicted Wesleyan Methodism brought loss and confusion between 1853 and 1860. Yet when Conference met at Tunstall in the latter year to celebrate its jubilee it could report 675 ministers and 11,384 local preachers, 132,114 members, 2267 chapels, 167,533 scholars and 30,988 teachers. Over-seas, too, there was much activity and success; Work begun in Australia and New Zealand prospered, and the former country finally contributed over 11,000 members to the formation of the United Methodist Church of Australia, New Zealand with its 2600 members preferring to remain connected with the home country. In the United States there had been a quiet but steady growth since the first agents went out in 1829 and Hugh Bourne's advisory visit in 1844. There are now three Conferences-the Eastern, Pennsylvania and Western, with about 70 ministers, 100 churches and 7000 members. The Canadian churches had a. good record, consummated in 1884 when they contributed 8000 members and 100 ministers to the United Methodist Church of the Dominion. In January 1870 the first piece of real foreign missionary work was begun at Fernando Po, followed in December of the same year by the mission at Aliwal North on the Orange River in South Africa. This station is the centre of a polyglot circuit or district 150 m. by 50 m., and there is a membership of 1731 and an efficient institution for training teachers; evangelists and artisans. In 1899 another South African mission was started, ultimately locating itself at Mashukulumbwe, and a few years later work was begun in Southern Nigeria. Since 1885 Primitive Methodism has been developing from a “Connexion” into a “Church,” the designation employed since 1902. At home a Union for Social Service was formed in 1906, the natural outcome of Thomas Jackson's efforts for the hungry and distressed in Clapton and Whitechapel, and of similar work at St George's Hall, Southwark. Other significant episodes have been the Unification of the Funds, the Equalization of Districts and the reconstruction of Conference on a broader basis, the Ministers' Sustentation Fund and the Church Extension Fund, and the enlargement and reorganization of the college at Manchester. This undertaking owes much to the liberality of Sir William P. Hartley, whose name the college, which is a school of the Victoria University, now bears. The Christian Endeavour movement in Great Britain derives, perhaps, its greatest force from its Primitive Methodist members; and the appointment of central missions, connexional evangelists and mission-vans, which tour the more sparsely populated rural districts, witness to a continuance of the original spirit of the denomination, while the more cultured side is fostered by the Hartley lecture. In celebration of the centenary of the Church, a fund of £250,000 was launched in 1907, and this was brought to a successful issue. Statistics for 1909 show 1178 ministers, 16,158 local preachers, 212,168 members, 4484 chapels, 465,531 Sunday scholars, 59,557 teachers. In the United States there were, in 1906, 101 church edilices and a total membership of 7558.
See H. B. Kendall, The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church (2 vols., 1906); and What hath God Wrought? A Centenary Memorial of the P.M. Church (1908).
(A. J. G.)
PRIMOGENITURE (Lat. primus, first, and genitus, born, from gignere, to bring forth), a term used to signify the preference in inheritance which is given by law, custom or usage, to the eldest son and his issue, or in exceptional cases to the line of the eldest daughter. The practice is almost entirely confined to the United Kingdom, having been abolished by the various civil codes of the European states, and having' been rejected in the United States as contrary to the spirit of the constitution. The history of primogeniture is given in the article SUCCESSION, while the existing English law will be found in the articles HEIR; INHERITANCE; WILL, &c. But it may be brieiiy said here that the English law provided that in ordinary cases of inheritance to land of in testates the rule of primogeniture shall prevail among the male children of the person from whom descent is to be traced, but not among the females; and this principle is applied throughout all the degrees of relationship. There are exceptions to this rule, as in the cases of “ gavel kind ” and “ borough-English, ” and in the copyhold lands of a great number of manors, where customs analogous to those of gavel kind and borough English have existed from time immemorial. In another class of exceptions the rule of primogeniture is applied
