Bye Paths in Baptist History -Part 8 Hillcliffe

Jim Curran Admin · 3 hrs February 16, 2020

Bye Paths in Baptist History Part 8 Hillcliffe

Hillcliffe, near Warrington. We have reliable evidence that a Separatist, and, probably, a Baptist Church, has existed for several centuries in a secluded part of Cheshire, on the borders of Lancashire, about a mile and a-half from Warrington. No spot could be better chosen for concealment than the site on which this ancient chapel stood. Removed from all public road, enclosed by a dense wood, affording ready access into two counties. Hill Cliffe was admirably suited for the erection of a conventicula illicita, an illegal conventicle. The ancient chapel built on this spot was so constructed that the surprised worshipers had half-a-dozen secret ways of escaping from it, and long proved a meeting-place suited to the varying fortnites of a hated and hunted people. Owing to the many changes inseparable from the eventful history of the church at Hill Cliffe, the earliest records have been lost. Bat two or three facts point to the very early existence of the community itself. In 1841 the then old chapel was enlarged and modernized; and, in digging for the foundation, a large baptistery of stone, well-cemented, was discovered. How long this had been covered up, and at what period it was erected, it is impossible to state ; but as some of the tombstones in the graveyard adjoining the chapel were erected in the early part of the Sixteenth Century, there is some probability for the tradition that the chapel itself was built by the Lollards who held Baptist opinions. One of the dates on the tombstones is 1357, the time when Wycliffe was still a Fellow at Merton College, Oxford; but the dates most numerous begin at the period when Europe had just been startled by Luther’s valiant onslaught upon the Papacy, and Henry the Eighth had recently published his book against the German Reformer, which earned for him the title of “Defender of the Faith.” Many of these tombstones, and especially the oldest, as we can testify from a personal examination, look as fresh and clear as if they were engraved only a century ago. The names of some of the early ministers of Hill Cliffe chapel have been snatched from oblivion. One of them, Mr. Weyer-burton, or Warburton, was related to the oldest family in the county of Chester, was a person of substance, and ” a true warrior of Christ’s Church.” His connection with Hill Cliffe chapel, as its minister, was accidentally discovered some years ago in examining the title-deeds of the Warburton property. Mr. Weyerburton died six years after the destruction of the Spanish Armada. A record of this good man’s life, if one could obtain it, would throw much light upon the condition of the Separatists and Anabaptists in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Although Mr. Weyerburton is the first minister of Hill Cliffe of whom anything is known, he is not necessarily to be regarded as the earliest minister of the congregation. Mr. Dainteth succeeded Mr. Weyerburton. The graveyard contains the tomb of his successor—Thomas Slater Leyland, “a minister of the Gospel,” as the inscription tells us. He was buried in the year preceding the death of Queen Elizabeth. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Tillam was the minister of Hill Cliffe. Oliver Cromwell worshiped at the chapel when his army lay at Warrington, and one of his officers occupied the pulpit. Thomas Lowe succeeded Mr. Tillam, and attended the General Assembly of Baptists held in London the year after the landing of William^ Prince of Orange. This (1689) was also the date of the passing of the Act of Toleration, from which period, as every Dissenter knows, really begins the legal diffusion of Nonconformity through-out Great Britain. During the pastorate of the next minister, Mr. Francis Tomer, a man of great ability, of restless zeal, and of extensive usefulness, the first Baptist church was formed in Liverpool, mainly through the labours of some of Mr. Turner’s converts. Hill Cliffe is undoubtedly one of the oldest Baptist churches in England, but its claim to be the oldest is still disputed by some. The earliest deeds of the property have been irrecoverably lost, but the extant deeds, which go back considerably over two hundred years, describe the property as being “for the use of the people commonly called Anabaptists.” The modem chapel stands upon the gentle slope of a sandstone hill. The wood which embosomed the ancient sanctuary has long since been cut down, and the present modest meeting-house is conspicuous from afar,—from the streets of quaint old Warrington, and from the wide reach of level country by which that historic town is surrounded.

Joseph Jackson Goadby. Bye-paths in Baptist history (Kindle Locations 471-507).