Kidderminster and Richard Baxter

	Richard Baxter, Puritan divine

One of the most remarkable men of the 17th century was the Rev Richard Baxter. I quote from an old book about hymns that I have.

Richard Baxter was one of the most remarkable men of his generation. For the most part self-educated, he published 168 books on a great variety of topics. Though licensed to preach by the Anglican Church, his conscience would not allow him to accept fully the views of any sect. "He grew too puritan for the Bishops and too Episcopalian for the Presbyterians" - and that meant trouble in those days of fierce sectarianism. He could not keep out of politics and that meant more trouble, for he favoured Cromwell (to a certain extent) and as chaplain in his army took part in seven battles. Yet he rebuked Cromwell for usurping the chief place in the state. He helped bring about the restoration of Charles II, yet he helped dethrone James II. At first not much of a preacher, he became the prince of preachers in London. When most Puritan clergymen disapproved of music in church, he was an ardent champion. Persecuted for twenty years, he died a most honoured citizen and two hundred years after his death members of all creeds raised a monument to his character and his deeds in the town of Kidderminster.

In this same Kidderminster he performed a miracle and that at the very beginning of his career. When the Long Parliament began its work in 1640, it undertook to reform the clergy of the Established Church. The attitude of some of these ministers towards their flock had become scandalous. They took their pay from their people's tithes yet gave nothing in return. As Milton wrote in his poem Lycidas, "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." The result after a century of Protestantism, added to previous centuries of Romanism, was that parts of England were simply not civilised. The town of Kidderminister was especially noted for its ignorance and depravity, so that some of its citizens complained to the committee which Parliament had named to hear grievances. This committee finally forced the rector of Kidderminster, whose salary was £200 to give up £60 a year to provide a preacher who would do something. Young Baxter, age 26, was chosen. With some intermissions he stayed nineteen years. He changed that town and the surrounding country beyond anyone's belief. Brutality gave place to something like manners; ignorance yielded to skilled teaching, until it was said that irreligious peope became not the rule, but the exception.
A. E. Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950 p. 32