Joseph Ritson's The Romance of Primitive Methodism sums up, more than any other book, the self-image of the movement's followers; and it continued to do so long after nominal reintegration in 1932. Propelled by faith alone, humble disciples fulfilled their Christian duty, overcoming by superhuman efforts the denial of spiritual provision to a biblical poor. They created the most clearly working-class church of early nineteenth-century Evangelicalism, and today this is often seen as an integral part of the journey to wider enfranchisement of that emergent class. This book concludes that both are myths. Ritson was following a century-long tradition of presenting the story as a modern gospel; and by treating the resulting allegory as literally true, later writers have allowed sociological determinism to turn it into one of class-based adversity.

The reader should ask what credentials I can offer for this view, given that the orthodoxies, old and new, have emerged from people who collectively, and in many cases individually, are or were significantly more talented, better-trained, and equipped with deeper knowledge of the Evangelicalism of the period. After all, I have asked it throughout my research journey, mindful that ‘the Information Age has given new respectability to uninformed opinion’.

The reason, I believe, is that both stances rest upon an outsider error which casts Britain's poor as victims. Their disadvantage is not in doubt, but I reject this patronising view of them. Perhaps though, like the Witchfinder-General, I zealously found evidence of what I sought where it did not exist. I am not well-placed to judge that, because none of us can abandon our world-view for perfect neutrality. Nobody arrives at a subject without her or his individual baggage.

The reader might therefore benefit by a short detour through mine. I was born into a working-class household in Central Scotland shortly before Christmas 1947, elder son and third of six children. We were brought up to be God-fearing and churchgoing (although we later realised that my father's inability to attend because of work commitments was a polite fiction to cover his loss of faith during the Second World War), and to value education as a route to self-improvement.