Benjamin Severn

Benjamin Severn (1767-1829) began a twenty-year pastorate of the Baptist church at Fore Street, Harlow, in 1796, having formerly attended the Baptist meeting at Walworth under Joseph Swain.  During his ministry in Harlow the congregation steadily increased, requiring the meetinghouse to be enlarged in 1810 to seat 600 persons. “For twelve or fifteen years,” Thomas Finch writes, “Mr. Severn’s ministry seems to have been very acceptable and useful, and the number of members was considerably increased” (Brief 544).  Though trained as a Calvinist, Severn adopted an Arian position during his tenure at Harlow.  According to the church history, “In consequence of this persuasion, several meetings were held on the subject.  Things went from bad to worse. Mr. Severn was asked to resign by a majority of the members.  He refused and was supported in his determination to continue by the other half of the church. In consequence, the greater part of the members withdrew and fitted up another place of worship, which was opened for that purpose on Sunday, May 20th, 1816” (Young and Barker 11).  Eventually, Severn did resign, and the two congregations reunited once again.  Severn removed to Epping where he died in March 1829. He was buried in the Baptist cemetery at Foster Street, Harlow, just one month after Flower was buried there. In 1817, Thomas Finch arrived from Kings Lynn and quickly resolved many of the lingering suspicions between the two factions, bringing the congregation once again within the tenets of Calvinism. The removal of the heterodox Severn and arrival of the orthodox Finch may have brought Flower to the conclusion that it was now time for him to leave Harlow as well, which he did in 1819. For more on Severn, see Thomas Finch, Brief Biographical Memorials, of the Ministers and Proceedings of the Protestant Dissenting Congregation, of the Baptist Denomination, Harlow, Essex (Bishop’s Stortford: W. Thorogood, 1820), 43-47; Baptist Cemetery, Harlow, Register of Burials.