Of Francis Bampfield, Early English Sabbatarian Witness
By W. A. S.
J. N. ANDREWS, in his “History of the Sabbath,” gives an account of the work of Francis Bampfield, a Sabbath-keeping preacher of England, and of his death in Newgate Prison, London, where he was held for his loyalty to the Sabbath of the Lord his God. Some further particulars may be gathered from the history of English nonconformity in those days of steadfast witnessing in the face of a persecuting church establishment. In Calamy’s “Nonconformists’ Memorial,” it is said of Francis Bampfield:— “He was one of the most celebrated preachers in the west of England, and extremely admired by his hearers, till he fell into the Sabbatarian notion, of which he was a zealous asserter.”—Vol. II, p. 152.
Some particulars of Bampfield’s life are given in an old London work, Wilson’s “History of Dissenting Churches.” We are told that he was born in Devonshire, in 1614. Educated at Oxford, he entered the ministry of the Church of England. He had a small private annuity, and chose to give away to the needy the stipend that came to him as ministerial salary. He was made prebendary of Exeter Cathedral in 1641. He was a Bible Protestant, and felt that the Established Church needed reforming. When the Act of Uniformity was enacted, requiring all ministers to follow the ritualistic liturgy of a new prayer5book, he left the church, in 1662, along with more than two thousand others. Wilson says:— “Soon after his ejectment he was apprehended and imprisoned for worshiping God in his own family.”—Vol. II, p. 586.
After his release he became, like so many others of those heroic days, a wandering herald of the gospel, teaching and preaching, with the law ever in pursuit. He was again arrested, and spent eight years in Dorchester jail. The history says:— “In the prison he preached almost every day, and success attending his labors, he gathered a church there. Upon his discharge in 1675, he went about preaching the gospel in several counties. But for this crime he was soon apprehended again, in Wiltshire, and imprisoned at Salisbury.”—Id., p. 588.
It was during these years in prison that his attention was called to the subject of baptism, and he accepted Baptist principles. Then while still in prison the Sabbath truth came to him, and he began to obey. He had turned from the way of worldly honor and high preferment in the state establishment, to follow his Master. The Word of God was his guide. As it taught baptism, he became a Baptist. When he saw that it taught the perpetuity of the Sabbath, he followed Christ’s steps in this way also. He was a man who loved God and the truth. On his release from prison, he went to London, finding refuge for a time in that great wilderness of people. He gathered a church of Sabbath keepers, meeting in Pinner’s Hall, near the Bank of England. It was from this hall that he was taken by the officers, on Sabbath, Feb. 17, 1682, and put on trial. He was sentenced to forfeiture of all his goods—little enough—and to remain prisoner for life in Newgate Prison. When the recorder was to pronounce sentence, Bampfield and some friends essayed to speak; but, says the record, “there was a great outcry, ‘Away with them! put them away from the bar! we will not hear them!’” From his prison, however, Bampfield issued published testimonies in behalf of the Sabbath truth. Literally to the end, this energetic and gifted man of God bore his witness, suffering all things, enduring all things, that the cause of God might be advanced and souls won to the way of righteousness. What an inspiration to faithfulness comes to us from the lives of these witnesses to the light of Sabbath reform in the dark times of religious persecution. Approaching seventy years of age, and worn with a life of privation, Bampfield was unable long to endure the rigors of imprisonment in Newgate. Within a year he succumbed, dying on Sabbath, Feb. 16, 1683. He was buried in Goswell Street, London, his body being followed to the grave by “a very great company of factious and schismatical people,” one old record tells us. It shows in what esteem this man of God was held by many. W. A. S.