Kingsbridge, Devon, Baptists

Kingsbridge, Devon, Baptists. The following account is taken from W. T. Adey, The History of the Baptist Church, Kingsbridge, Devon (Kingsbridge, 1899).  

The first minister of note is Martyn Dunsford, who came from Tiverton in 1700 to pastor the church (7).  He died in 1713.  The church was attending the meetings of the Western Association of Particular Baptists by 1733 (8).  Crispin Curtis took over from 1718-68, and during that time Whitefield visited in 1744 (11).  Philip Gibbs was converted by hearing Whitefield (12).  William Wykes took over in 1769, coming from Northampton where he had been a tutor at Ryland’s academy.  He left in 1776 and returned, evidently, to Northampton (18). Martyn Curtis pastored from 1766-1783, when Humphrey Penn took over, with Caleb Evans, Gibbs, and Birt conducting his ordination service (15).  Penn died in 1802.  During his tenure, Rippon in his Annual Register noted of Kingsbridge, “The house is frequently crowded with hearers, a considerable part of whom come from numerous places in the vicinity, where Mr. Penn regularly preaches, and yet it is feared that but few of late have been converted” (19).  Thomas Roberts, before taking the Church in the Pithay, preached a few months after Penn’s death (20).  Before Penn’s death, however, in April 1799 a new chapel was completed (20).  Penn was especially vigorous in preaching in the surrounding villages (21).  Apparently, the early church books were sent to Rippon to view and were subsequently lost, but others are at Regent’s Park and Dr. Williams’s Library (21).  John Nicholson took over and pastored from 1803-32 (25).