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If men’s or women’s abilities or sense of divine vocation drew them to the attention of the circuit quarterly meeting, they could be appointed as travelling preachers. High standards were expected of those who accepted this call. Brown (1980:128-33) has calculated that over 40% who set out in the ministry between 1831 and 1871 did not last for more than four years. For the decades 1831-1851, his calculation is that 38% ceased by the end of four years’ service, and over 56% by the end of 14 years’. Some left for secular work, some resigned, some simply “vanished”. The work was arduous, especially for married men with families.

The questionnaire sent annually to the circuits to be returned to the connexional authorities has been preserved in the Andover Circuit reports. Here are some matters about which enquiries were made concerning a circuit’s ministers:

 is he deemed capable of being a circuit superintendent

 is he attentive to discipline

 is he a smoker

 is he in debt

 how many family visits did he make over the past year

 is he peaceable

 is his preaching generally acceptable

 is his preaching long

 does he preach a full, free and present salvation

 is he successful in the conversion of sinners

 his general conduct

 is he attentive to chapel affairs

 do his dress and hair conform to the rules

 has he read all the Rules during each half of the past year

 did he get the circuit books duly signed in his previous circuit.

In June 1844 the circuit resolved “That the Preachers, Local and Travelling, be requested to keep to scriptural Preaching and not to Philosophical Preaching.” Some observations may clarify the phrase

“philosophical preaching.” Wesley expresses the matter thus in the Preface, dated 1747, to his 53 Sermons on several Occasions:

I design plain truth for plain people: therefore, of set purpose, I abstain from all nice and philosophical speculations; from all perplexed and intricate reasonings; ... I labour to avoid all words which are not easy to be understood, all which are not used in common life; and, in particular, those kinds of technical terms that so frequently occur in Bodies of Divinity; ...

which to common people are an unknown tongue.

Petty states, when writing of the coming of Samuel Heath and others into Wiltshire in the 1820s:

The PM missionaries stood up in the streets, and with fearless courage proclaimed the solemn truths of revelation. Multitudes were drawn by curiosity to listen to their orations, most of whom seldom entered church or chapel, and among whom fine language and smooth

required the important truths of the gospel delivered in plain, strong language, with homely illustrations, and with earnestness of manner and depth of feeling.

The Primitive Methodist Preacher’s Magazine (June 1831:118) has an article “On Plainness of Preaching”:

Let us remember that we do not mount the pulpit to say fine things, or eloquent things, we have there to proclaim the good tidings of salvation to fallen man, to point out the way of eternal life, to exhort, support, and to cheer the suffering sinner: these are the glorious topics on which we have to enlarge, and will these permit the tricks or oratory or the studied beauties of eloquence? Shall truths and counsels like these be couched in terms which the poor and ignorant cannot understand?

Magazine (1845:240) advises all preachers, local and itinerant, not to “recite elaborate and fine essays” and never to use unfamiliar vocabulary.

There was little formal education available to working class people in the period, and many preachers began with very little educational background. Travelling ministers did not receive formal training till 1865. William Mason, born on 17th October 1817 in Brandon, Lincolnshire, wrote in his 1877 autobiography⁵⁸:

During the winter of 1834 I was awakened to the fact that I was a sinner, and needed salvation. ... I went to Brandon, a distance of four miles, to hear a ploughman preach. None of the preachers I had heard seemed to do me any good, as they were too high for me; but this man in a smock frock preached the simple story of the Cross. I walked back with him to Claypole and heard him again at night, and in the prayer meeting I found what I had long been seeking - the pearl of great price, - and I rejoiced in sins forgiven... I united with the Primitive Methodist Church.

Thompson (1939:208) describes local preachers, mainly farm labourers or small shopkeepers:

“There was something fine about their discourses, as they raised their voices in rustic eloquence and testified to the cleansing power of ‘the Blood’, forgetting themselves and their own imperfections of speech in their ardour.”

Long preaching was not appreciated. PMHB:viii states that “a sermon or discourse is delivered, for about twenty, or from that to thirty minutes. It should scarce ever exceed thirty minutes.” John Ride was instructed at the December 1839 Reading Circuit quarterly meeting to “admonish Edward Long for Long Preaching.”

The Consolidated Minutes (1849:29-31) require the preachers’ quarterly meeting to inquire into the doctrine, pulpit capabilities, and moral and official conduct of all the preachers and exhorters, and when the meeting entertained doubts as to the prudence of any preacher continuing on the Plan, the matter was to be transferred to the circuit quarterly meeting. People were removed from the Plan for moral or doctrinal reasons; this study discovered none removed for inadequate “pulpit capabilities.”

It is conceivable that they were not admitted in the first place unless they had already proven themselves to have the required gifts.

Travelling preachers (Minutes 1836:35) were required to provide a journal recording their activities to the circuit committee monthly or as otherwise directed. There are many references to these journals in this thesis. Nuttall (1967) points out that they are another instance of PM imitation of Quaker practice.