Oliver Heywood and his Congregration

Abstract

The ministerial career of the presbyterian divine Oliver Heywood, spanning as it did the years from 1650, when as a young man still technically too young for ordination he first accepted the call of the congregation at Coley chapelry in the parish of Halifax, until 1702 when on 4 May he died there, a patriarchal figure respected and admired by fellow ministers and congregation alike, was considered by contemporaries and has subsequently been thought of by historians as an exemplary study of the pastoral tradition within old Dissent. His career illustrates how one man could lie at the centre of a network of nonconformist divines, patrons and adherents scattered throughout West Yorkshire, South Lancashire and Cheshire and also demonstrates the ambivalent and shifting relationship between Dissent and the Established Church in the latter half of the seventeenth century. These insights into both the internal and external relationships of Dissenters depend mainly on the corpus of Heywood’s writings, not his published works but his autobiographical notes, diaries and memoranda books published just over a century ago, and it is these writings which form the basis of this paper. To begin with though we can turn to the diary of the antiquary Ralph Thoresby who attended Hey wood’s funeral on the 7 May 1702 and recorded the event as follows: rode with Mr Peter’s to North Owram to the funeral of good old Mr O. Heywood. He was afterwards interred with great lamentations in the parish church of Halifax. [I] was surprised at the following arvill, or treat of cold possets, stewed prunes, and cheese, prepared for the company, which had several conformist and non-conformist ministers and old acquaintances.