Benjamin Evans, D.D., and The Radical Press

Abstract

"'\ Y !HEN, as a young minister, Benjamin Evans (1803-1871) W arrived in Scarborough in 1826 "the nation was rising from the oppression under which it had groaned for a long season . . . The spirit of constitutional liberty was rising in her might and girding herself for a long and severe conflict. The Test and Corporation Acts were in full force. Municipal and Parliamentary reform was unknown; and church rates, the right to marry by Dissenters, and the Acts for registration of births and deaths !had to be wrung from a dominant faction in the nation."l EVlans, writing this in 1871 in A Brief History of the First Baptist Church of Scarborough (in 1826 it was known as Ebenezer Chapel) passes very quickly over his rOle as one of those leaders of Protestant noncon[ormity who "wrung" the concessions of religious freedom from the established order. "