Little is known of the General Baptist Church at Chichester from 1648 to 1671, but in l654 James Sicklemore, in the company of the much younger and later more famous Matthew Caffyn of Horsham, attended the General Assembly of the General Baptist Church which ‘disavowed Fifth-Monarchy Sentiments’,¹⁰ and James died two years later in 1656. The parish register entry of his burial refers to him as ‘the elder’, but whether this signifies that he was the elder, or pastor, of a baptist church, or the elder of two men named James Sicklemore, is not clear. It was certainly the custom to refer to the leader of a general baptist church as ‘the Elder’ and for him to be appointed by the local Church, though usually ordained by ‘messengers’ or senior pastors from a wider area.

The Minutes of the Assembly of General Baptists give the following: “Sussex and Hants were evangelized by James Sicklemore, once vicar (? rector) of Singleton, near Chichester; but the work here fell by 1656 under the influence of Matthew Caffyn, an Oxford student who settled at Horsham.”¹¹

By 1671, the Elder of Eastgate General Baptist Church was George Smith and a meeting-house had arisen. The original building was erected on a piece of land at Eastgate Square obtained on 20th Nov. 1671 for £14.5s.0d, but some of it was sold again for £7.2s.6d. In the following year a licence was secured for the house of William Fletcher in the parish of St. Pancras; he and George Upton were licenced as teachers.¹² George Smith was spoken of as a “worthy minister, and one who suffered much for the sake of good conscience. He was confined for a long time in Horsham jail, to the great distress of an affectionate wife and five small children, and two of his sons, William and John, became useful and acceptable ministers of the Gospel.¹³

There are a few tantalising references about this time to a ‘Particular Baptist Church’ in Chichester. Writing about Sussex, Ivimey¹⁴ says “The Baptists in this County were mostly, but not exclusively of the General Baptist denomination, as we find that Mr. Henry Jessey visited the churches of Hampton and Chichester in 1655 which we apprehend must have been Particular Baptist churches.” Then in January 1706, according to the records of the Bedford church, “Mr. Joshua Read was dismissed to the Church of Christ in Chichester. Mr. Read, being a Baptist and a Calvinist, makes it probable that the church visited by Mr. Jessey in 1655 was still in existence.” It is possible that the church referred to was not a Baptist church, but was the Independent Church (later Congregational), which was calvinistic at that time.

¹⁰The Baptist Quarterly, October 1934 p.174 Author not stated but believed to be the work of Dr. Whitley.
¹¹Baptist Historical Society. Letter from E. J. Tongue, Librarian, 7th August, 1952.
¹²Ivimey History of the English Baptists 1811 - 1830.
¹³Taylor History of the General Baptists Vol. 1 P.292
¹⁴Ivimey Ibid