Local Baptist Leadership

Abstract

"This measure had considerable importance for the dissenting churches in a way which its framers had not. envisaged, since under its terms by using Chancery enrolment they were able to obtain additional security for their title to property. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries many dissenting congregations had been relatively unsophisticated in this respect, being more concerned with the exigencies of survival in unsure times than in passing on chapels, meeting houses and any other property which belonged to them to succeeding generations of church members. 2 . Early deeds could be so loose that property was lost when it passed into the hands of non-Baptists.3 As late as 1772 two of the men, including the occupier of the property, who were among the five applying to register a house for Baptist worship in the parish of Tewin near Hertford, did not become church members. "