To return to the General Baptist Church, it is perhaps remarkable that this church persisted at all in that period, when the political situation is considered. Charles II had come to power and with the Restoration formal persecution returned. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 had been followed by the first Conventicle Act of 1664, which made it illegal for more than five persons over the age of sixteen (apart from members of the same household) to assemble together for worship except according to the rites of the Book of Common Prayer.

“In 1665 the Five Mile Act barred ministers who did not swear an elaborate allegiance to the king, national church and state, from going within five miles of any place where they had previously ministered. A much more severe Conventicle Act became law in 1670: a single justice of the peace ..... could convict without specific evidence if he believed a conventicle had been held. Anyone present could be fined and fines were heavy for any minister present and for anyone who provided the meeting place for a conventicle; and informers were rewarded by a third of the fines imposed.”¹⁵

No doubt it was for some infringement of these laws, or the 1648 Ordinance for the Punishing of Blasphemies and Heresies, that George Smith was in Horsham jail, where he met Matthew Caffin (or Caffyn), who was minister at Horsham for more than sixty years, and was committed to prison five times for unauthorised preaching – first at Newgate in London and at other times in Maidstone or Horsham.

Ivimey¹⁶ says of those days, “Though many of the bishops did not appear in these persecutions, choosing rather to throw blame upon the civil magistrates, some of them, as Bishop Ward and Bishop Gunning, disturbed the meetings in person. This last gentleman was so zealous in the cause, that he sunk his character by giving a public challenge to the Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, and appointed three days for the disputation; in the cathedral church at Chichester, on the first day of which his lordship went into the pulpit in the church, where was a considerable congregation, and charged the former three with sedition and rebellion out of their books, but would hear no reply. The Baptists on the second day were treated with much greater respect than the Presbyterians and Independents. The bishop probably recollected the dispute which he had with Mr. Henry Denne in St. Clements Church by Temple Bar in 1658 – and from this circumstance was able to judge the strength of their arguments.”

It is interesting that three centuries later, the late Canon Lowther-Clarke, a noted Anglican scholar, showing a party of Baptist ‘lay’ preachers round the same Chichester Cathedral, remarked, “I always get on well with Baptists – they are so high church!” Then he corrected himself and said, “I mean they have such a high conception of the Church.”¹⁷

In 1672, King Charles II published a declaration of indulgence, but only on the accession of William in 1688 did the Toleration Act of 1689 mark a real step towards freedom of worship.

It was a time of turmoil within the churches of the land and it is not surprising to find that as the Toleration Act took effect there were schisms even in the dissenting churches. Ivimey¹⁸ refers to such a schism among the General Baptists in 1696 “in consequence of the erroneous sentiments (about the Divinity of Christ) introduced by Mr. Matthew Caffin. From this time the General Baptists became two parties, the one called Monkists, from Thomas Monk of Buckinghamshire, and Caffinites, from Mr. Caffin of Horsham.” The General Baptist Assembly in that year published a mandate to forbid churches holding communion with the Caffinites, but in 1704 the same Assembly revoked this decree and declared it lawful for their churches to unite with them. It is clear that the reference to the work at Chichester “coming under the influence of Matthew Caffin” indicates that in these comparatively early days of the Chichester church, as the 17th century came to its close there were tendencies to non-trinitarian theology.

¹⁵John Caffyn Sussex Believers: Baptist Marriage in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Churchman Publishing 1988. Chapter 2 gives a fuller account of the historical and religious background of these centuries, with particular reference to the General Baptists.
¹⁶Ivimey Ibid.
¹⁷West Sussex Baptist Preachers’ Association Conference at Chichester, 28th March, 1953.
¹⁸Ivimey Ibid.