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The Worcestershire Association of ministers ‘for our mutual help and concord in our work’ (Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii. 28), as its purpose was expressed by Richard Baxter, its inspirer and leader, has aroused frequent interest and attention, alike for the catholicity of its intention, the degree of success which for a few years it achieved and the example which it set to other ministers throughout the country. It is the more strange that no accurate study has appeared of its personnel. The document containing the original signatures has remained in manuscript at Dr Williams' library, and escaped the notice of Dr F. J. Powicke, chapter xi in whose Life (1924) of Baxter is the most recent study of the Association. In that chapter Powicke made use of a second, and later, MS. list of signatories, but for the rest he relied on the list given in W. A. Shaw's History of the English Church 1640–1660 (1900), ii. 454 f. There Shaw strangely asserts that ‘for the geographical extent of the Association we are reduced to Baxter's Autobiography and to Richard Farnsworth's True Testimony against the Pope's ways: in a return to that agreement of 42 of those that call themselves ministers of Christ … in the County of Worcester and some adjacent parts, published 20th March 1655–56’; as if the list of names provided in this Quaker attack on the Association were not taken direct from the first edition of The Agreement of Divers Ministers of Christ in the County of Worcester, which Baxter published in 1656. Shaw's list is thus a conflation of the names given by Baxter several years post eventum and of those given by Farnsworth, including Farnsworth's vagaries of spelling; and even so Shaw duplicates three of the names. In his edition (1939) of Baxter's Reformed Pastor the Rev. J. T. Wilkinson reprints certain documents relating to the Association, but for its membership contents himself with a reference to ‘the full list’ given by Powicke. A collation of the various sources in manuscript and in print may be of service in indicating how the movement spread from an initial eighteen to a group of something like four times that number; and also who were the original, and who the continuing, supporters of the Association.
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