Within three months after this, Cennick was again in peril. While preaching at Stratton, the Swindon mob arrived, with “swords, staves, and poles.” Cennick writes:――“Without respect to age or sex, they knocked down all who stood in their way, so that some had blood streaming down their faces, and others were taken up almost beaten and trampled to death. Many of our dear friends were cut and bruised sadly; and I got many severe blows myself.”
Notwithstanding, however, this brutal opposition, Cennick’s labours were successful. He formed several Societies. At Brinkworth, in the month of August, 1741, he began to build his first meeting-house. “On Monday, October 25, 1742,” he writes, “I bought the house and land at Tytherton, where now our chapel is built; and, on Sunday, November 14, I preached the first time there, after we had taken down several lofts at one end of the house, in order to make room.”[30]
Cennick continues, “Two days after this, we were sadly misused at Langley-Burrell. The rude people, besides making a noise, cut the clothes of the congregation, threw aquafortis on them, and pelted them with cow-dung.”
In the midst of all this, Cennick wrote to Whitefield, as follows:――
“Last Tuesday, at Langley, several persons came, casting great stones at the windows of the house where we worshipped, and hallooed to each other to disturb us with their noise. They then blamed each other for not dragging me out of the pulpit, and pulling the house to pieces. At last, they laboured very hard in gathering dirt and filth, which they continued to throw at us till we finished. Not content with this, they laid wait for us in the fields and lanes, and pelted us as we passed on our way. They cut the clothes of some of the Society with scissors, and pushed them into brooks and ditches.
“The persecutions in these villages seem to increase in proportion as the work goes on. The ministers and parish officers threaten to famish the poor ‘Cennickers.’ Their threats have prevailed with some, while others tell them, ‘If you starve us, we will go’ to the meetings; ‘and rather than we will forbear, we will eat grass like the kine.’”[31]
Such was poor Cennick’s plight. First of all, Whitefield wrote to him a letter of consolation:――