Facts and Figures: the Reliability of Methodist Membership Returns

Almost from the outset, Methodists of various kinds meticulously recorded a bewildering array of detailed information about their connexions. A considerable body of that material survives for several Methodist groups in Bedfordshire but it is worth considering the nature of these documents and to ask, how reliable are they?

The earliest surviving local register is a list of the members of Okely's society in December 1744 which gives not only their names, but their marital status and place of residence. A second document lists those formally admitted to the Moravian congregation between 1744 and 1812, their date and place of birth, marital status, place of residence and previous religious affiliation. Formal admission was decided by lot and some people had to wait several years to be admitted which means that the timing of those admissions bears no clear relation to the timing of the recruitment of the individuals concerned. There are no comparable records for any of the Calvinistic Methodist groups who were active in the county.

The first Wesleyan statistics come from a book, begun in July 1781, which lists the members of each class in the Bedfordshire circuit, their marital status, occupation and place of residence. The list was probably drawn up by the senior preacher before he set off for that year's conference, with the intention of providing some kind of handover notes for his successor and perhaps to help him calculate the number of members he should report. Gradually the information recorded each year increased. In 1792 there is, for the first time, a note of the money being taken to conference, the proceeds of the Yearly collection, the Kingswood collection and subscriptions to the Preachers’ fund. The entry for 1799 begins the practice of listing the stewards and local preachers and from 1802 the accounts show how much each society had collected for the ‘West India Mission’.

Circuit books of this kind seem to have been a standard feature of Wesleyan circuit life until 1836, when they were replaced by an officially produced volume setting out a number of schedules to be completed quarterly. The schedules required each society in the circuit to be listed, their class leaders named and the number meeting in their classes (see Plate 26).