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Primitive Methodism was a major separate movement in English Methodism in the first part of the nineteenth century.
The birth of Primitive Methodism is generally agreed as occurring in 1811 in Staffordshire, when two groups joined -- Hugh Bourne 's ' Camp Meeting Methodists ' and William Clowes' ' Clowesites '.
The movement was spawned from the personal followings of two men. Bourne and Clowes were charismatic evangelists with a rebellious streak. Both had reputations for zeal and were sympathetic to ideas the Wesleyan Connexion condemned. Their belief most unacceptable to the Wesleyan Connexion was support for "Camp Meetings." These were day-long, open air meetings involving public praying and preaching.
Clowes was a first generation Methodist convert -- at the age of 25 he renounced his desire to be the finest dancer in England. The movement was also influenced by the background of the two men, Clowes had worked as a potter, while Bourne had been a wheelwright. Both of them had been expelled from the Wesleyan Connexion -- Bourne in 1808 and Clowes in 1810. The reason given for Clowes' expulsion was that he behaved "contrary to the Methodist discipline," therefore he could not be a "preacher or leader amongst them unless [he] promised not to attend [camp] meetings anymore."
It seems likely that this was not their only concern regarding the pair. Bourne's association with the American evangelist Lorenzo Dow would have put him in a dim light with Wesleyan leaders. The Wesleyan leadership's hostility to Dow is demonstrated by a threat Dow received from prominent Wesleyan (and twice president of the Conference in 1797 and 1805) Thomas Coke, on his arrival in London around 1799. Coke threatened to "write to Lord Castlereagh to inform him who and what you are, [and] that we disown you,... then you'll be arrested and committed to prison."
The Wesleyan Connexion would also have been concerned about Bourne and Clowes' association with the "Magic Methodists" or "Forrest Methodists" led by James Crawfoot. Crawfoot, the "old man of Delamere Forest," was significant to both Bourne and Clowes because he was for a time their spiritual mentor. He held prayer meetings where people had visions and fell into trances. Crawfoot, according to Owen Davies, had developed a reputation for possessing supernatural powers. Indeed Henry Wedgwood, writing later in the century, recalled that many locals at the time were terrified of the magical powers of an innkeeper called Zechariah Baddeley, but that they considered Baddeley's powers nothing next to the Crawfoot's prayers and preaching.
The enthusiasm associated with revivalism was seen as disreputable by the early 19th Century establishment. In 1799, the Bishop of Lincoln claimed that the "ranter" element of Methodism was so dangerous that the government must ban itinerancy. Men like Bourne and Clowes were not educated members of the establishment and so their preaching and mass conversion was a challenge to the hegemony and its conceptions of manners, as well as to paternalism and order.
The Wesleyan Methodists, such as Dr. Coke, wanted to distance themselves from popular culture, which bourgeois society considered vulgar. Their impatience with the less respectable elements of the Methodist movement was exacerbated by wider developments. The death of John WesleyJohn Wesley was an 18th century preacher and the founder of the Methodist denomination of Protestant Christianity. He was born at Epworth, England (23 miles north-west of Lincoln, England) June 28, 1703, and died in London March 2, 1791. Youth The Wesleys removed an important restraining influence on popular Methodism. After his death there was no obvious leader to take control of the movement and power was invested in the Wesleyan Conference. The movement no longer had someone who could say conclusively what the Methodist position on any subject was. The Camp Meeting Methodists were able to look back to the early days of the Methodist movement and conclude that amongst other things, field preaching was acceptable.
Also, the Wesleyans formally split from the Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and is the mother branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. Christianity was planted in Britain in the first or second c, which led them to greater organisation and self-definition. Speaking for the whole of the church necessitated imposing a greater level of discipline on members. The leadership could withhold the tickets of members, like Bourne and Clowes, that did not behave in the way expected by the Conference. The result was that there became less toleration for internal dissent, whilst there was a profound weakening of the movement's leadership.
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