The Rise of Methodism: A Study of Bedfordshire, 1736-1851

A radical re-examination of the rise of the largest popular movement in early nineteenth-century Britain draws on a wide range of evidence to give a bottom-up account of the growth, life and impact of early Methodism in Bedfordshire, an unlikely stronghold This radical re-examination of the rise of the largest popular movement in early nineteenth-century Britain draws on a wide range of evidence to give a bottom-up account of the growth, life and impact of early Methodism in Bedfordshire, an unlikely stronghold. The study digs beneath the seemingly steady advance portrayed by official membership statistics to uncover a much more unstable and rapidly changing picture in which different generations and social groups appropriated the religious structures of the movement as vehicles to express a wide variety of aspirations and grievances.