Glory! Glory! Glory! Glory! This has set my soul on fire, Strongly glows the flame of love, The Wesleyan Methodist Society, in one of those years, increased, I am told, by 30,000 members. The visit of this American evangelist, though it did nothing to associate religion with humanitarian idealism, and little to create a social conscience, nevertheless revived the flames of Wesleyan Methodism and breathed some sense of greatness into the sordid air of a much troubled manufacturing town. It exercised a profound influence upon William Booth's astonishing career, and in the shout of "Glory! Glory! Glory!" one may trace the dawn of Booth's great central preaching, that religion is not imposed as a difficult and laborious thing by an exacting God, but given as a blessing and deliverance to poor sorrowful creatures punished and afflicted by their own wrong-doing. As regards the orthodox religious life of the town, it would seem that Nottingham did not suffer so greatly as other parts of the country from disreputable or sporting clergymen. Parson Wyatt, for instance, the vicar of Sneinton Church, was a Puseyite, and is remembered by many Nonconformists as a good, earnest, and zealous man. But, on the whole, the churches of the town seem to have been conducted on the principle that those who wanted religion would come and ask for it, and those who stayed away had deliberately elected for evil. There was no missionary spirit. Men's minds were taken up with political and industrial questions. Christianity was distinctly in shadow. It may be said with a fair degree of truth that throughout the length and breadth of the land Anglican clergymen were Tories before everything else, and dissenting ministers, as they were then called, in spite of a subdued interest in revivalism, were in large measure concerned with Liberal politics. CHAPTER II HIS PARENTAGE, a tale OF THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE WAS BORN, AND THE CHARACTER OF HIS ENVIRONMENTS 1828-1838 It is an interesting coincidence that the father of Herbert Spencer came from Derby into the neighbourhood of Nottingham at about the same time that the father of William Booth migrated from Belper to a Nottingham suburb. Both men speculated with their savings, moved by the same hope of fortune from the extraordinary prosperity of lace manufacture by machinery, and both were disappointed in this ambition. The father of Herbert Spencer withdrew before he was quite ruined; the father of William Booth clung stubbornly and avariciously to his speculations, finally dragging down his wife and family into a condition of penury. In Herbert Spencer's Autobiography an amusing anecdote is recorded which shows that his father had something of the same spirit which animated William Booth. "If he saw boys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he could never pass a man who was ill-treating his horse without trying to make him behave better." This incident is recorded: "While he was travelling (between Derby and Nottingham, I think) there got on the coach a man who was half intoxicated. My father entered into conversation with him, and sought to reform his habits, by pointing out the evil resulting from it (sic). After listening goodtemperedly for a time the man replied, 'Well, y' see, master, there mun be sum o' all sorts, and I'm o' that sort.'" If heredity were an exact science one might expect William Booth to be a son of George Spencer, and Herbert Spencer to be a son of Samuel Booth. According to Mr. Phillimore, the author of County Pedigrees, distinct evidence runs back through the local register "associating the Booths with Belper at least as early as the reign of Elizabeth." Whether the family distinguished itself in any way we do not know, but before the days of Elizabeth the fifty-first Archbishop of York was a William Booth, who had his favourite residence at Southwell, which is close to Nottingham, and where the William Booth of our present history spent a part of his childhood. A brother of this older William Booth, Lawrence, became fifty-third Archbishop of York, and also made Southwell his chief residence. He was a grievous failure as Lord Chancellor, but it is written that he took no bribes. In private life, we are told, he was "an amiable and benevolent man, expending large sums of money on educational and charitable objects." There seems to be no doubt that the family of General Booth is connected by marriage with that family of Gregory which gave in the person of Robert Gregory, a contemporary of General Booth, a popular and picturesque Dean to St. Paul's Cathedral. A William Booth of Belper, apparently the great-grandfather of the evangelist, was married in 1742 to Elizabeth Gregory; the bondsman at the first marriage of Samuel Booth in 1797 was Robert Gregory; and the evangelist, on being told late in life of this coincidence, said that he remembered being taken as a child to see an old lady who was always spoken of as "Aunt Gregory." Samuel Booth, father of the evangelist, was born at Belper in 1775. It was in the town of Belper that Primitive Methodists were first called Ranters; and since Samuel Booth was nominally a Churchman, and a hard, taciturn, unemotional man, it may be assumed that he shared in this local contempt for the new sect. He appears to have been a nail manufacturer, for on the occasion of his marriage in 1797 to one Sarah Lockitt he described himself in the register as a nailer. Later he added to this business the trade of builder and the profession of architect, earning a fortune which enabled him to live in a fine house at Colston Bassett and to describe himself sometimes as a "gentleman," sometimes as a " yeoman." One child was born of this first marriage, a son named William, who died of con sumption at the age of twenty-four, five years after his mother's death in 1819. Mary Moss, the second wife of Samuel Booth, and mother of the evangelist, was born in 1791, six years before the first marriage of her husband. Like Samuel Booth, she came of Derbyshire stock, probably, as the name suggests and her wonderfully handsome face corroborates, of Jewish origin. She was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. Her mother died when she was quite young, and she went to live with relations, the second marriage of her father not being conducive to a happy family life. She encountered Samuel Booth at Ashby-de-le-Zouch, whither he had gone to drink the waters as a cure for rheumatism. On his first proposal she refused him. He left the town indignant, but returned, and renewed his proposal, leaving her no peace till she accepted him. Of this marriage there were five children. The eldest son, a boy named Henry, died in his third year; the second child was a daughter, Ann, destined to exercise some little influence on the evangelist in his early years; the third child was the evangelist himself, named William after the son of the first marriage, who had died five years previously and the two remaining children were girls Emma, a lifelong invalid who died unmarried, aged forty, and Mary, who became Mrs. Newell, and died at the age of sixty-nine. William Booth, therefore, grew up the only son of the family, with an elder sister and two younger sisters. Samuel Booth did not come to Nottingham until he had more or less impoverished himself by speculation, and in leaving Colston Bassett it is quite certain that he not merely hoped to retrieve his fortunes, but was positively obliged by his altered circumstances to seek a very much humbler way of living. In those days Nottingham was just beginning to lose its ancient charm of a beautiful and pleasant market-town distinguished by a romantic history. Deering had boasted in 1750 that the town, "adorned with many stately new buildings, the castle on the left, and Sneinton and Wolwick Hills on the right, presents the traveller coming from the south with a surprisingly grand and magnificent prospect, |