Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

annually reminds one how regrettable it is that these hundreds of application forms that must have reached the Board from Wales alone do not seem to have been preserved. By the kindness of the Rev. Ralph Calder, the Secretary of the Congregational Fund Board I have perused two of these printed forms and in view of the questions they asked concerning the membership of the church and number of services held, the population of the town or village where the church was situated, the amount of the minister's salary and income, and so on, one realises that a valuable source of information concerning Independent Churches and ministers in Wales over a number of years has been lost. It is at this juncture, when discussing ministers in Wales helped by the Board that a reference should, I feel, be made to William Fuller, a Banker of Lombard Street, London. Already in this paper we have mentioned the words Fuller's Donation' more than once. No assessment of our debt as a denomination to the Congregational Fund Board would be complete without paying a tribute to this truly remarkable man who is reputed to have shared out in his lifetime £ 60,00080 to various charities an enormous sum of money. Like Thomas Jones of Chester81 he made much money and seems to have spent it all on the task of furthering religion. He was a member of Three Cranes Church, Thames Street, of which Samuel Pike82 was minister. Pike was excluded from the Pinners' Hall Lecture because of two sermons he preached there. It became obvious that he was leaning heavily towards Sandemanianism and contentions ran high in his church. William Fuller, who was a prominent member of Pike's church was the leader of the opposition to the minister, and published anonym- ously a pamphlet entitled Reflections on an Epistolary Corres- pondence designed to sink the reputation of Mr. Pike The result was that Fuller left with others and went to Little St. Helen's Meeting House. Pike ended up a Sandemanian.84 Fuller was clearly an enlightened champion of the Calvinist faith and an evangelical, filled with a desire to do everything in his power to further religious societies that existed for the purpose of propagating the Gospel, and ever ready to give a lending hand to the needy and distressed. He was a very active member of the Board, at one time serving with his minister Samuel Pike as a Messenger. He was a subscriber 80 See Kenneth W. Wadsworth, Yorkshire United Independent College (1954), 57. 81 For Thomas Jones see article by Dr. Tudur Jones in Y Cofiadur 1958, 40-51. 82 D.N.B. 83 Wilson, vol. ii, 93, et seq. 84 See R. T. Jenkins, Yng Nghysgod Trefecca (Caemarfon 1968), 50.