Religious leader - Abingdon on Thames Town Council

Thomasine Pendarves

Thomasine Newcomen was born in Dartmouth, Devon, in 1618 into a pious and affluent family. In or before 1647, she married John Pendarves, who became vicar of St Helen’s in Abingdon and afterwards was minister of a Baptist congregation. Although formally a Baptist like her husband, her religion was of a more mystical nature than he could approve of, and she caused him embarrassment on several occasions. The most serious instances centred on her relationships with Elizabeth Poole, the political prophetess, whom she defended when Baptist policy was to disown her; and with a disreputable itinerant preacher and writer, Abiezer Coppe, with whom she exchanged passionate letters which could be read either as profoundly spiritual or deeply erotic, and which he unfeelingly published.

Thomasine Pendarves had six children, but it does not seem that any of them survived into adulthood. After her husband’s death, she remained in Abingdon, paying occasional fines for attendance at illegal religious services, but disappears from the records after 1671.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Oliver Sansom

Oliver Sansom, leader of the Quakers in the Vale of White Horse, was born in 1636 in Beedon but of a family based in Charney Bassett. At seven, and in spite of this being in the front line in the Civil War, he was sent to an aunt in Charney to go to the school at nearby Longworth. He first attended a Quaker meeting in 1657, but it was not until the early 1660s that he became a serious member of that sect. By then he had married Jane Bunce who was of another Charney family. Over time, he converted Jane and the other members of both families to his own new beliefs.

Of the many sects that proliferated in those disturbed times, it was the Quakers who were the most disliked both by Anglicans and by other Dissenters. They separated themselves from normal society, insisting on obeying what they regarded as God’s law even when this was at variance with the law of the land. In particular, they refused to pay the tithes that maintained the Anglican clergy. Sansom was destined to spend long periods of his life in prison, although this doesn’t seem to have greatly hampered his sectarian activities.

Living as a farmer in Boxford, Sansom became leader of the Quakers in the region of Newbury. But before 1678, after much legal trouble over tithes, he gave up farming and moved to Faringdon as a mercer. Faringdon became the centre for the three hundred or so Quakers in the Vale, one of three such groupings in Berkshire. It was led by Sansom with the help of members of his family: his wife Jane handled administrative and social affairs, and her sister Joan Vokins the spiritual teaching and exhortation.

Sansom was an occasional visitor to Abingdon for missionary work and recruiting, and in 1691 he moved there permanently for the purpose of reinforcing the local Quaker community which was always a small one. A Quaker meeting house was established near the west end of Ock Street before 1700. Sansom made his home in Boar Street, the present Bath Street. Although it was no longer illegal to be a Quaker, he continued to defy the law in refusing to pay taxes and tithes, and remained in continuous conflict with the local authorities until his death in 1710. He left numerous polemical writings, administrative documents, letters, and a very informative autobiography.

Sansom was buried in the Quaker burial ground near the meeting house. He and his wife are not known to have had any children.

Edward Stennet

With Edward Stennett, Abingdon can claim to have been at the origin of a new religious denomination. Many things are uncertain about him, and dates given for his birth and death are contradictory. He may have come from Lincolnshire, and he very probably served in the parliamentary army during the Civil War as a chaplain.

He was living in Abingdon in the 1650s as a member of the Baptist community set up by John Pendarves, and came to prominence when he began to preach that the true Sabbath should be observed on the seventh day, that is on Saturday, and not on Sunday. Some merchants began to shut up their shops on Saturday and open them on Sunday, which concerned the town authorities. There was an exchange of printed tracts between Stennett and another amateur theologian and local politician, John Hanson, debating the matter with great enthusiasm and an enormous number of biblical citations. About 1671, Stennett moved to Wallingford where his ideas found more support, and continued to preach and publish.

After him, the movement was led by his Abingdon-born son Joseph, followed by Joseph’s son, another Joseph, and grandson Samuel. They developed the Seventh Day Baptists into a major denomination which, by the nineteenth century, had a world-wide membership. Thereafter it declined, but it still has active congregations, mostly in America.

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