Thomas Claypole

Thomas Claypole (1772-1825) began his ministry in the Particular Baptist church at Rushden, near Bedford. He came to Bratton in 1804, serving as pastor of the Baptist congregation there until 1809, when he removed to Bloxham, Oxfordshire. His final ministry (1818-23) was at Yeovil, Somerset, where Mary Steele’s mother was born. His salary at Rushden was a paltry 16s. per week, supplemented by a grant from the Particular Baptist Fund.  In June 1813 he wrote the Circular Letter “Growth in Grace” for the Association of Baptist Churches meeting in parts of Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Glocestershire. Eliza Gould heard Claypole preach at the Old Meeting in Bedford (John Bunyan’s church) in December 1799 and wrote to her future husband, Benjamin Flower, that Claypole ‘in his prayer told us that “our sins had perforated the clouds” & so little did the sermon edify me that I resolved in the afternoon to hear Mr Burkitt’ (the Independent minister in Bedford). Flower responded from Cambridge, ‘Pray may I not call Mr Claypole, by your account of him, a thick or a wooden head? I am really provoked that ignorance and stupidity united attempt to instruct others, and that men of sense would admit persons of such a description into their pulpits’. Jane Attwater Blatch generally speaks well of Claypole in her diary, but Maria Grace Saffery is much closer to Eliza Gould, opining after his resignation in 1809 that ‘Mr Claypole’s resignation exceeds my hopes this fit of decision must have been like a spasmodic influence on the native constitutions of his mind.’ Unfortunately, his churches experienced little if any growth under his ministry. See W. F. Harris, The Romance of a Northamptonshire Baptist Church ( London, 1901), 47;  Leslie Brook,  Baptists in Yeovil: History of the Yeovil Baptist Church (Bath: Ralph Allen, 2002); John Rippon, ed., Baptist Annual Register, 4.28; Joseph Ivimey, A History of the English Baptists. 4 vols. (London: J. Ivimey, 1811–1830), 4.314; Timothy Whelan, Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2009), 211, 216.