urate received the commendation of his superior for so well
looking after his affairs!

Since the date to which the foregoing state of things refers, the
Established Church has had an awakening which has taken a real hold
upon and has been influenced by the laity, and has recognised that it
has a mission to the people rather than an official routine, facts
which are not without significance in their bearing upon what follows
with regard to the town of Royston, and the relative positions of the
Church and Dissenting bodies.

A hundred years ago the Nonconformists included most of the wealthy
families in the town and neighbourhood. The pulpit at the Old Meeting
(Independents) erected in the narrow part of Kneesworth Street in 1706
was occupied at least once a year by Robert Hall, the great Baptist
preacher then at Cambridge, who was a not unfrequent visitor at the
houses of Edward King Fordham, the banker, and William Nash, the lawyer.

One of the principal events in the religious life of the town at the
end of last century was the division of the congregation of
Independents at the Old Meeting.

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The origin of the New Meeting, as it was called, was a very small one,
and does not look at first like a very serious split in the old
congregation. An old paper, still in existence, written apparently and
read at the opening of the New Meeting, states that "in the year 1791 a
few of us met at a friend's house a few weeks for prayer and the
reading of the Word of God; our numbers soon increased and then we met
in a barn for a considerable time. We went on till the year 1792, and
our numbers still increasing we erected this meeting." At this time
the Rev. Mr. Atkinson was the minister. It is evident, however, that
the new movement grew apace, and some interest began to be taken in it
in the town, for on 24th February, 1791, we find J. Butler laying J.
Beldam a bottle of wine "that the New Meeting House will be begun in
six months at Royston." Evidently Mr. Butler won his bottle of wine,
for on the 2nd of May, in the same year, the contract for the new
building, to be afterwards known as the "New Meeting" (Kneesworth
Street) was signed.

It is interesting to note the plain, inexpensive kind of building which
suited persons assembling for public worship compared with to-day, for
the amount of the contract for erecting the building "in a workman-like
manner" was only L320. This contract was between John Stamford,