Arthur Clegg

Arthur Clegg – J. C. Ryland, in his MS. book entitled “The Society for Christian Improvement and Good Works” (MS., Bristol Baptist College Library), which he began in October 1759, listed “Arthur Clegg” as the Baptist minister in Manchester. That entry may have been added after 1759, for it is more likely Clegg was affiliated with Caleb Warhurst and the dissenting chapel in Cold House Lane in 1759. In 1762 the paedobaptists withdrew, led by Warhurst, to form a new Independent congregation in Cannon Street. According to Ashton, an Edmund Clegg took a small group of High-Calvinists from the congregation at Coldhouse and formed a new meeting at Shudehill, which he ministered until c.1781, at which time he left and the congregation rejoined Coldhouse. Whether Arthur Clegg left with the group that went to Cannon Street or the High Calvinist group at Shudehill is unclear. In 1804 an Arthur Clegg, Esq., of Manchester subscribed £3 to the Baptist Missionary Society. An Edmund Clegg pastored a High Calvinist church at Shudehill, 1762-1781. See “The Johnsonian Baptists,” Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society 3 (1912-1913): 56; BMS Periodical Accounts, 3:145; Ralph Ashton, Manchester and the Early Baptists: Being a Sketch of the Origin and Growth of the Particular Baptist Church Worshipping in Gadsby’s Chapel, Rochdale Road, Manchester (Manchester: n.p., 1916), 21; William Urwick,  Historical Sketches of Nonconformity in the County Palatine of Chester (London: S. Fletcher, 1864), 293; Kenneth Dix, Strict and Particular: English Strict and Particular Baptists in the Nineteenth Century (Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK: Baptist Historical Society, 2001), 30-66.