The latest edition of the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society (autumn 2026) has just been published. We lead with the text of this year’s Annual Lecture by David Bebbington, delivered at the WHS library in Oxford in July. No stranger to the pages of these Proceedings, of course, David Bebbington’s essay focusses on the exercise of church discipline at Brunswick Chapel in Leeds between 1825 and 1875. It argues that discipline, far from being a means of suppressing the grievances of the working classes, as claimed by E. P. Thompson, was relatively rare and mainly used as a means ‘to eliminate public deceit’ among the middle class lay leaders of Methodism. Far from being a means of promoting capitalism, Bebbington argues that Methodist discipline was rather a means of checking its faults and excesses. The second article, by Colin Dews, also focusses on the Leeds area, but looks at William Bramwell and religious revivals in the early nineteenth century. As ever, this issue contains a large number of book reviews, covering some of the latest publications in Methodist studies and related areas.
Copies of the Proceedings can be obtained through subscribing to the Wesley Historical Society. Details can be found by following this link to the Membership page.
David Ceri Jones, President of the WHS and editor of the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society.