THE '' PECULIAR PEOPLE ''
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audience one evening was William Bridges, a hat-block
maker, who had at one time been a Wesleyan preacher, and
who was much impressed with Aitken's doctrine. At this
time, Bridges had staying with him on holiday, a friend,
James Banyard, a shoemaker, of Rochford, Essex, who was
also a Wesleyan local preacher. Together, they discussed
the doctrines expounded by Aitken, and, after himself
attending some of Aitken's meetings, Banyard returned to
Rochford and there preached the dual doctrine of
Assurance of Holiness and of Salvation. He had to
relinquish his Wesleyan ministry, and thereupon he
preached in Rochford market-place and instituted services
in his own house in West Street.
He quickly gathered about him a considerable body of
labouring men and women, by whom, perhaps for the first
time in their lives, a simple statement of credible doctrine
had been understood—a doctrine too simple and unqualified
to appeal to more sophisticated folk of higher culture.
Banyard extended his preaching to Stambridge, Great
Wakering and Prittlewell, villages all within a mile or two
of Rochford, where his congregations were almost entirely
of agricultural labourers and their wives, at that time mostly
illiterate folk. The less religious, together with the more
intolerant, of his neighbours took malicious pleasure in
tormenting the gatherings, and "rotten eggs, dead cats,
and pails of filth were plied against them".(1)
In 1838, four years after Aitken's secession, the Peculiar
People, as they now called themselves, founded their first
church in Rochford(5) : the word "peculiar" was here used
in its proper sense of "owned by" (their God in this case)
and not in the usual modern connotation of "extra-
ordinary ''. No one was admitted into the congregation
and fellowship unless first professing perfect assurance of
salvation and the forgiveness of sins. No payment was
made to preachers, who were enjoined to subsist by manual
labour. The Peculiar People first met in Union Lane,
Rochford, and soon obtained, by purchase, the old Rochford
Barracks. By using their own labour to demolish the
partition-walls of three rooms, they made their first chapel,
capable of holding 100 people.(1)