The Clapham Sect

Holy Trinity is associated with the group of friends known to history as “the Clapham Sect”. They lived around Clapham Common and worshipped here. Devout Christians, they fought for religious and humanitarian causes, notably the abolition of the slave trade.

Their campaign was led in Parliament by William Wilberforce, and in 2007 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Act to Abolish the Slave Trade. But they took up many other causes; the heritage they have left us includes the Church Mission Society and the Bible Society. Their standards of integrity left a lasting stamp on this country’s public life. They threw down a challenge to their times. Britain, they believed, was uniquely blessed by Divine Providence: our nation had been kept safe in times of war, and we had received so much material wealth from others that we must return to them treasures more valuable than silver and gold - the treasures of the Gospel and Christian freedom. We must set right the wrongs that Africa had suffered at our hands. That challenge is as strong for us today as it was then.

 William Wilberforce and the campaign against the slave trade

William Wilberforce

Prior to the eighteenth century, few Christians had questioned the ancient institution of slavery. But gradually, concern and opposition started to rise, against slavery in the most vicious form ever known, the Atlantic slave trade. The first organised group to voice opposition was the Quakers, in America and then in Britain. They allied themselves with Granville Sharp and with Thomas Clarkson, a young Cambridge graduate convinced by his studies that slavery was wrong, and in 1787 an Abolition Committee was formed.

To campaign effectively, they had to have a champion in Parliament; so they approached a man who had the drive, skills and sympathy - William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce was a rich and talented young man, who after a long and slow process had become converted to evangelical Christianity. He agreed to take up the cause and in 1789 made his first speech on the subject in the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards, he moved to Clapham, to share a house overlooking the west side of the Common with his cousin Henry Thornton.

Above - the model  of a slave ship. Below - the Wedgwood medallion.

Others came to Clapham to join them. James Stephen, a lawyer, had been horrified by what he seen of the brutal treatment of slaves in Barbados. Zachary Macaulay came here after serving as Governor of Sierra Leone, a new colony founded by Granville Sharp and others as a refuge for freed slaves. Here in Clapham he set up an African Academy, a school for boys from Sierra Leone who could be educated as future leaders of their country. (Sadly it was not a success since few of the children survived our climate.) Another Clapham ally was the radical MP William Smith. Outside Clapham, information about the trade was provided by Clarkson and by the Revd John Newton, Wilberforce’s mentor and himself a former slaver (and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace”.)

To sway Parliament, the campaign was taken to the country. Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave and a talented writer, toured the country promoting his book, which described the horrors of the Middle Passage. Clarkson had an engraving made, showing how slaves were packed together on the Middle Passage - a picture with a power to horrify us today.  Wilberforce had a model made of it, which he demonstrated to Parliament.  Josiah Wedgwood made a ceramic medallion, of a kneeling slave with the words “Am I not a man and a brother” - a modern audience might well find this condescending, but it was powerful in its time. Petitions against the trade poured into Parliament.

George Hibbert,  Wilberforce's opponent

But the times were against the campaigners. The French Revolution had overthrown the established order in France, attacked Christianity and plunged Europe into a series of wars, in which Britain found herself as isolated as we were in 1940. The reaction in Parliament was to resist all change. It was not until the Battle of Trafalgar had removed the threat that the tide turned. Despite a last resistance from the West Indian plantation interests, led by George Hibbert of Clapham, in early 1807 Parliament passed the Act which made the slave trade illegal.

That was not the end of the story. The illegal trade continued, with the Royal Navy doing its best to stamp it out. Wilberforce and his friends campaigned for the British Government to persuade other countries to follow our lead. In Britain, there was reluctance, which Wilberforce shared, to take the next step of freeing the many slaves who were still exploited in the Caribbean plantations. It was not until 1833 that Parliament took that last step, the Act passing through the Commons as Wilberforce lay on his deathbed. On 1 August 1838, slavery in the British Empire at last ended.

The Great Awakening

The eighteenth century was a sceptical age. Formal religion was accepted as necessary, but after two centuries in which Europe had torn itself apart in religious strife, anything approaching religious enthusiasm was distrusted. But a revival was beginning - the movement of the spirit which we call Methodism, or the Evangelical Revival, and American historians call the Great Awakening. Those touched by it often used the term “vital religion” - religion that was alive within them. The Clapham Sect were part of this great movement.

John Thornton and (below) the Revd. John Venn

The Thorntons and the Venns

The story of the Clapham Sect starts in the 1750s with John Thornton. The Thorntons were Russia merchants, trading from Hull with the Baltic. They prospered, came to London, and bought a country retreat on Clapham Common South Side. John Thornton was a man both of great wealth and of great piety. He became a close friend of the Revd Henry Venn when the latter was Curate at the old Parish Church here in Clapham in the 1750s. Venn had felt the call to a more serious religion and he and Thornton supported and encouraged each other.

 
Thornton also used his wealth to support poor clergy, to finance clergy training and to buy the right to appoint to parishes clergy of his own persuasion. It is to Thornton we owe not only the building of Holy Trinity Church in 1776, but the appointment as Rector of Henry Venn’s son John in 1792. John Venn was not only a great preacher, but an assiduous worker for the health and well-being of his parishioners.

Spreading the Gospel, and social reform

Another member of the group, Charles Grant, had returned from India convinced of the need for Christian missions to the sub-continent. Existing missionary societies served only English speaking colonials, and Grant and his Clapham friends saw the need to take the Gospel into Asia and Africa.

Led by John Venn, the Clapham Sect were the nucleus of the group which in 1799 founded what is now the Church Mission Society. In 1804 the group founded the British and Foreign Bible Society, its first President being Lord Teignmouth, a former Governor General of India, who had come to live in Clapham.

In this country, the Clapham Sect supported Sunday Schools and other schools for the poor. They opposed cruel sports and were among the earlier supporters of legislation to protect factory children. In politics they were conservative, even repressive; but in an age when political corruption was the norm, they brought their moral standards into politics, fighting elections without bribery, and voting on issues as their moral sense and not as party politics told them. British political life was changed by their example.

Finding out more

A fuller account of the Clapham Sect is in The Clapham Sect by Margaret Bryant, published by the Clapham Society. Priced £7.50, it may be obtained from the Clapham Bookshop or from the Clapham Society, 22 Crescent Grove, London SW4 7AH (tel. 020 7622 6360).