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The
Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt – Revised and Enhanced Edition
Edited by Scot Facer
Proctor and Maurine Jensen Proctor
Chapter
39
Visit
and ministry in Bolton — Conduct of two Methodist priests
— Arrest and trial — Emigration — General conference at Manchester
— Council of the Twelve — Charter the ship “Tyrean” — “Philosophy
of the Resurrection” — Emigration on the ship “Chaos” — Visit
to the Isle of Man — Visit to Norwich — Mob.
January 19, 1841–November 1841
On the 19th of January, 1841, I visited Bolton for the first time; found an interesting Society there consisting
of about one hundred and thirty members, including some small
branches in the vicinity. They appeared to be dwelling together
in truth and love, and zealously united in the cause of God
and godliness.
Their presiding officer is an aged minister by the name of Crooks,
formerly of Stockport; through whose labors
the Society there has grown from a small handful to its present
flourishing condition. The meetings are crowded to excess, and
scores of people are pressing forward and uniting with the Church
by repentance and baptism. The Holy Ghost is poured out into
their souls, and its fruits are manifested in their gifts and
blessings.
On Wednesday evening, the 20th, I attended one of their meetings,
and had the privilege of addressing a full and attentive audience.
The subject was confined to a few scriptural observations, in
which the precepts and promises of Christ were clearly set forth,
as contained in the written word of the New Testament. These
were contrasted with the systems of Christianity as they now
exist, and the difference was so manifest that the people saw
clearly that the religion of Christ was one thing, and modern
sectarianism another.
This so exasperated some craftsmen who were present, viz.: a
Mr. James Pendlebury, professedly a Primitive Methodist preacher,
and Mr. Thomas Balsham, of the New Connection, that they could
no longer hold their peace. For while the sermon was proceeding,
the said Pendlebury arose and began speaking so loud that the
speaker paused and requested the interruption to cease; but
was not heeded, for the intruder with stentorian voice continued
to cry out, saying: “This is a new doctrine, and we cannot believe
it without miracles; here is a blind man, heal him; here is
a blind man, heal him! You have preached a new doctrine — a
new doctrine, sir, and we want the proof — we want the proof!”
By this time the house was all confusion, everyone endeavoring
to act as moderator. We endeavored from the pulpit to command
silence, and expressed our surprise that the New Testament doctrine
should be a new doctrine; but we found that it was a new doctrine
to him, as was manifest in his behavior. Indeed, the doctrines
of common law and civilization were to him equally as strange
and new as the doctrine of Christ, for he still continued to
disturb the meeting. The Saints commenced singing, and finally
closed the meeting. But while this was proceeding the riot grew
more and more violent, till at length a form was broken, and
some other damage done. While the civil part of the people were
retiring from the room they were variously insulted by him and
his comrades, some crying out, “He hath a devil,” some challenging
to debate, and some calling for a miracle. At length a policeman
arrived and took this brave champion into custody, and his associate,
T. Balsham.
These were handcuffed, marched away, and finally held to bail.
Next morning they had a warrant served on them for a breach
of the peace, and were brought before James Arrowsmith, Esq.,
Mayor, and five magistrates. An able plea was made by Attorney
John Taylor, Esq., and a laborious attempt on the part of the
prisoners to justify themselves by the introduction of several
witnesses belonging to several different orders of Methodists,
whose testimony was more calculated to throw a false coloring
over our doctrine than anything else. At length Pendlebury was
found guilty of a breach of the peace, had to pay for the form
and make good the damages and costs of suit; and was bound in
the penal sum of ten pounds to keep the peace for six months.
It is to be hoped that these prompt measures will put a stop
to similar disturbances in our public worship, and also prove
a warning to other priests not to turn infidels against the
doctrines of the New Testament, and then use such vile measures
against the truth.
Since this affair we have heard verbally from Bolton,
that many are embracing the truth and coming to the waters of
baptism. May the Lord shed forth His Spirit upon the people
of Bolton, and cause a great work to be
done among them.
During February, about two hundred and forty of the Saints embarked
at Liverpool for America
, intending to
settle with the Saints at Nauvoo.
An edition of the Book of Mormon, consisting of 5,000 copies,
was issued by us at Liverpool during this
month. [1]
On the 6th of April, 1841, the Council of the Twelve assembled
at Manchester, in the “Carpenter’s Hall,” for the first time
to transact business as a quorum, in the presence of the Church
in a foreign land, being the first day of the twelfth year of
the rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Nine of the quorum were present, viz.: Brigham Young, Heber
C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, [2] Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Wilford
Woodruff, Willard Richards, John Taylor, and George A. Smith. [3]
President Young having called the house to order and organized
the Conference, then opened by prayer. Elder Thomas Ward was
then chosen Clerk. The President then made some introductory
remarks relative to the organization of the Church in the house
of the Lord in America;
in reference to the different quorums; in their respective orders
and authorities in the Church.
The representations of the Churches and Conferences throughout
the kingdom were then called for. The total numbers of which
were as follows: 5,814 members; 136 Elders; 303 Priests; 169
Teachers; and 68 Deacons, besides about 800 souls who had emigrated
to America
during the year, who were not included in this representation.
* * *
Eleven persons were chosen and ordained to the High Priesthood
during this Conference, and twelve persons were ordained Elders.
Several new Conferences were also organized, and Presidents
were appointed for each Conference in the kingdom. [4]
The names of the several Conferences, with their respective
Presidents, were as follows: Manchester, P. P. Pratt; Edinburgh,
G. D. Watt; Liverpool, J. Greenhouse; London, Lorenzo Snow;
Macclesfield, J. Galley; Staffordshire, A. Cordon; Birmingham,
J. Riley; Glasgow, J. McAuley; Gadfield Elm, Thomas Richardson;
Preston, P. Melling; Brampton, J. Sanders; Garmay, Levi Richards;
Clitheroe, Thomas Ward; Froomes Hill, William Kay.
The business of the Conference being accomplished, several appropriate
discourses were delivered by different members of the quorum
in relation to the duties of the officers in their respective
callings, and in relation to the duties and privileges of the
members, also on the prosperity of the work in general. * *
*
Elders Young and Miller then sang the hymn, “Adieu, my dear
brethren,” etc., and President Young blessed the congregation
and dismissed them.
This Conference closed the mission of the Twelve for the present
in England, and as they were about to take their departure for
America, all save myself, an epistle [5] was addressed by them to the Saints in the British
Isles. It was written by my own hand, under the direction of
the President of the quorum, and signed by each of the nine
members present in that country. It was dated at Manchester, April 15, 1841. [6]
In the month of September, 1841, Brother Amos Fielding and myself
chartered a large new ship called the “Tyrean,” Captain Jackson,
master, for New Orleans. On which we sent two hundred and seven
passengers of our Society bound for Nauvoo.
Our chartered ship, the “Tyrean,” sailed with two hundred and
seven passengers on the morning of the 21st of September. On
going out of the dock the previous day, many hundreds crowded
around to witness a ship load of the sons and daughters of
Zion depart from their native
shore for the promised land. [7] They moved slowly out into the
river, singing:
Lovely native
land, farewell!
Glad I leave thee — Glad I leave thee —
Far in distant lands to dwell.
Next morning they weighed anchor
about ten o’clock, and hoisted sail before a fair wind; moving
away under the flag of liberty — the American Stars and Stripes.
The emigrants were all on deck, and in good spirits; and as
our little boat came off with three hearty cheers, they were
singing the favorite hymn:
How firm a foundation,
ye Saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
The last lines which we heard,
as their voices were lost in the distance, were as follows:
When through the
deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o’erflow.
Hats and handkerchiefs were still
waving in view as a last token of farewell. Soon all was a
dim speck upon the ocean; a few moments more and they vanished
from view in the wide expanse and lost in the distance. May
God speed them onward in their course, and land them safely
in their destined port.
The Star for October, 1841, contains several other communications
of interest; giving cheering accounts of the spread of the
work in various places, but we will not record them here.
The November number opens with an editorial on “The Philosophy
of the Resurrection,” from which we extract the following:
The mysterious
works of God in the formation, progress, changes, and final
destiny of creation, are all wonderful and miraculous in one
sense. The formation of the natural body in embryo, or even
of a plant or flower, is as much a miracle as the creation
or reorganization of a world or the resurrection of the body.
Each effect has its cause, and each cause its effect; and
the light, spirit or truth which proceeds from Deity is the
law of life and motion; the great governing principle of the
whole machinery of the universe, whether natural or spiritual,
temporal or eternal. It is the cause of causes; the main spring
of nature’s time piece. By it we live; in it we move and have
a being.
Let man be placed upon a lofty eminence surrounded with the
original elements of uncreated worlds; let him contemplate
the confused and chaotic mass of unorganized existence; let
him hear the voice of truth and power as its first sentence
rolls in majesty of wisdom from the lips of Deity; let him
behold the first movement of chaos as it begins to come to
order.
Let him contemplate its various workings till the heavens
and earth, and man and beast, and plant and flower startle
into conscious being in all the beauty of joyous existence;
let him observe every minute particular of its progress through
time in all its various changes; let him contemplate the changing
seasons as they roll in hours and days, and months, and years;
let his thoughts reach to the starry heavens and view them
in all their motions and revolutions; the sun in its daily
course; the planets in their annual revolutions; the blazing
comet as it moves afar in the wilds of ether, and returns
from its journey of a hundred or a thousand years; let him
return to earth and view the vegetable kingdom as it blooms
and ripens and falls again to decay in the revolving seasons;
the time-worn oak of a thousand years, as it braves the tempest,
or the modest flower whose life is but a day; let him view
the animal creation in all its variety, as it appears and
passes in turn from the stage of action; let him contemplate
man from his infant formation through all the changes of his
various life till he returns to dust; let him view the laborious
revolutions of the groaning earth and its various inhabitants
through all their temporal career, till wearied Nature sinks
to rest, and, worn by slowly rolling years, the earth itself
shall die; and lastly, let him contemplate all Nature regenerated,
renewed, and starting into being, while death itself shall
conquered be and immortality alone endure.
The vision ended. Man! what
hast thou seen?
Nothing out of the ordinary course; all I beheld was Nature
moving in perfect accordance with the law of its existence;
not one single deviation or shadow of turning from the immutable
laws of truth.
But hast thou seen no miracle?
Yes, it was all miraculous; it was all achieved by the law
of light, which was the immediate power of God; but it was
all upon the most natural, easy, simple and plain principles
of Nature in its varied order, and which to call the most
miraculous I know not, whether it was the creation of a
world, the blossoming of a flower, the hatching of a butterfly,
or the resurrection of the body, and the making of new heavens
and a new earth.
All these were so many displays of the power of God.
All these were miraculous.
All these were natural.
All these were spiritual.
All these were adapted to the simplest capacity, aided by
the Spirit of God.
All these were
too sublime for an archangel to comprehend by his own capacity,
without the spirit of revelation.
On Sunday, October 17, 1841,
the Manchester Conference convened at the “Carpenter’s Hall.”
Twelve branches were represented, consisting of one thousand,
five hundred and eighty-one members, with appropriate officers.
Many were called to the ministry, and ordained to their respective
offices. Instructions were given in relation to the duties
of the officers, members, etc., and they were particularly
exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, together with
tobacco, snuff and all other evil habits.
After the ordinations,
the Saints present partook of the Lord’s Supper, and sung
and rejoiced together. Several interesting and useful addresses
were delivered at evening, and the meeting concluded with
a spirit of joy and satisfaction. The number of officers present
at this conference was about one hundred, and members not
far from one thousand.
Some hundreds had emigrated from this conference, and still
it numbered near one thousand, five hundred members, all of
whom had been gathered in about two years, and that from an
obscure beginning in a small basement in Oldham Road, being
the first place where the fulness of the Gospel was preached
within the bounds of what now comprises the Manchester Conference.
On the 8th of November we sent out the ship “Chaos,” with
about one hundred and seventy passengers of the Saints.
Cheerfulness and satisfaction seemed to pervade every heart
as they bid farewell to their native shores, and set sail
for the land of promise. [8]
Several interesting communications were received during the
month of November, from various parts of the country, the
purport of which was that the sick were healed, the lame walked,
the old men dreamed dreams, the young men saw visions, and
the Lord’s servants and handmaidens spake in tongues and prophesied,
while the Lord was showing wonders in heaven above, and signs
in the earth beneath — blood, fire and vapor of smoke.
In the meantime, the wicked rage, and the people imagine a
vain thing; the priests take counsel together against the
Lord and against His anointed ones. The most artful falsehoods
ever inspired by Satan continue to flood the country, both
from the press and pulpit, and reiterated by those who profess
to be followers of Jesus. We went on a short mission to the
Isle of Man of late, and after preaching
to vast multitudes the plain truth of the Scriptures, they
would mock and make light of the Bible, and everything quoted
from it.
The priests too were busy in church and chapel, in lying against
the Saints, and perverting the written Word, and thus inspiring
the people with violence, hatred and every cruel work; yet
we found the Saints rejoicing in the truth, and the honest
in heart disposed to inquire into it.
We have just returned from a visit to Middlewich and Norwich. In the former place we had a very candid hearing in the magistrate’s
room, which was filled. In the latter place many hundreds
of people assembled at our meeting house, among which were
a large number of “Association Methodists” and other professors,
with one Thompson at their head, who came possessed of the
devil to make disturbance. These made all manner of noises,
such as whooping, shouting, laughing, whistling, mocking,
etc. They openly hissed and mocked the written Word of Jesus
Christ and His Apostles, and made such a noise as to finally
break up the meeting; after which they began to rush among
the people, and to bellow like bulls, and to run over, and
knock down, and trample under foot all who came in their way.
We narrowly escaped, but finally got out of their midst. Mr.
Thompson then addressed them, justifying and applauding their
conduct. The lights were at length extinguished, and the room
cleared, but not until some persons were wounded, and some
forms broken.
Notes
[1] One of the
converts in Herefordshire to the south was John Benbow, a
successful farmer and immediate friend to the Church. “John
Benbow had been baptized only about a month when he and his
wife, Jane, came to see Wilford [Woodruff]. As they met in
a little sitting room, they earnestly recounted that they
had read in the New Testament how in the days of the Apostles,
Church members had sold all their possessions and laid them
at the Apostles’ feet, and they felt it was their duty to
fulfill that law and do the same thing. It was a moment Wilford
would never forget, recounting it in a speech fifty-five years
later, but for then, he said, ‘I gave them to understand that
God had not sent me to England to take care of his gold, his
horses, his cows and his property; He had sent me there to
preach the gospel.’ Though their offer was refused, the spirit
of it continued to animate their lives. The Benbows would
substantially finance the printing of the Book of Mormon in
England, pay for at least forty of the United Brethren [their
former religious society that had come into the Church] to
make their journey to Zion, and later put up bail to help
keep the Prophet Joseph out of jail” (Proctor, The Gathering,
32–34).
[2] Orson Hyde was on his way to Palestine.
[3] Of the original
Twelve called in Kirtland, Thomas B. Marsh, William E. McLellin,
Luke Johnson, John F. Boynton, and Lyman E. Johnson had been
excommunicated. David Patten had been killed at Crooked River, Missouri. Those who were not in
England were William Smith (who never went to England and
was excommunicated in October 1845), John E. Page (who also
never went to England and was excommunicated in June 1846),
and Lyman Wight, who was called and ordained to the Twelve
by Joseph Smith, in Nauvoo, on April 8, 1841, two days after
this conference in England.
[4] These conferences
were early forms of what became district and stake conferences.
[5] See Millennial Star 1 (April 1841): 309–12.
[6] In a letter
from Liverpool to his father-in-law, Parley described the
situation in England:
“Dear Friends, as all the Brethren of our quorum are to sail
for New York tomorrow, and as Elder W. Woodruff will move to Maine, I take this opportunity to send you a line.
We are all well, and prospering. More than five thousand souls
have been added to the Church by baptism, in this country,
since we came over, which is one year. Elder Hyde is here
on his way to Jerusalem on a mission, and the care of the
Churches in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Isle
of Man, are left for me ... This throws under my charge, some
thousands of members; and some six or eight hundred ministers
of the fulness of the Gospel. I truly feel that my responsibilities
are great indeed, and I feel to say with Solomon, O! Lord,
give me wisdom, that I may go in and out among thy people
and clear my garments of their blood. I know not when I shall
go to America” (Parley P. Pratt
to Aaron Frost, April 19, 1841, Letters, 1838–39, 1841). Parley
and Mary Ann’s second child (together) was born soon after
this on June 2, 1841, in Manchester,
England. William Smith (not the brother
of the Prophet Joseph) indicated that Parley came to the Saints
“in the summer of 1841 to Macclesfield, England, and preached in what then was called
‘Social Hall.’ He referred to the First Book of Kings, chapter
18, verse 44 speaking of Elijah the Prophet that went upon
the top of Carmel and prayed that the Lord would send rain.
He told his servant to look toward the sea. Seven times he
did so, and he saw a black cloud arise like a man’s hand.
Brother Pratt said that he saw a small black cloud rising
in the east and that war would break out and it never would
cease until wickedness moved off the earth” (William Smith,
statement).
[8] John Taylor
told of a sister in Liverpool who said
to him, “Brother Taylor, I had a very remarkable dream or
vision, I don’t know which, and it was something like this:
I thought that the Saints were gathered together on the Pier
Head—and there was a ship about to sail. The people said they
were going to Zion, and they were singing
what they called the songs of Zion, and rejoicing exceedingly; you were among them, and you were
going also. Now I want to know if you can tell what it means?”
(in Journal of Discourses, 25:180). Elder Taylor
told the British Saints, “[When the elders laid their hands]
upon your heads, among other things you received the Holy
Ghost and the spirit of the gathering. But you did not know
what it was that was working in you, like yeast sometimes
under certain conditions, producing an influence causing you
to come to Zion. Yet you could not help it. If you had wanted
to help it, you could not while you were living your religion”
(Taylor, The Gospel Kingdom, 122).
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Scot Facer Proctor and Maurine Jensen
Proctor are the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Meridian Magazine.
They live in the Washington, D.C. Metro area. |
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