Gidley's Meeting Chapel

From The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1870:

"The United Free Methodist chapel, in Musgrave-alley, belonged formerly to the Wesleyans, is very old, and has a massive Norman entrance. "

 

According to the Churches of Devon gallery at hhtps://www.historyfiles.co.uk "Musgrave's Alley Chapel stood on what is now Musgrave Row, on the eastern side of the short north-south section at its centre - this was formerly part of Musgrave's Alley which reached the High Street. The present stone-surrounded doorway to the BT Centre is noted by SW Heritage as 'doorway to chapel', seemingly the chapel's only surviving remnant. Presbyterians began worshipping here in what had been Holy Trinity (above) at a point in the 1700s."

The founding father of the Chapel, known as Gidley's Meeting, was Gustavus Gidley (1736 - 1810). He was an Officer of Excise, and a former sailor, the son of John Gidley, a clerk, and his wife Margaret nee Ellicombe. Gustavus was their youngest child, born in Crediton in 1736. His great great uncle was Bartholomew Gidley of Civil War fame, and his nephew was Philip Gidley King, governor of New South Wales. He was also distantly related to John Gidley, an exceptionally modest early non-conformist minister of exceptional abilities, but who could hardly be persuaded to say Grace at table, and who died in Marlow, Buckinghamshire in 1711. In 1764 Gustavus married Joan Coombe of Hatherleigh (Philip Gidley King also married a Coombe), and he was transferred from Port Isaac in Cornwall to Exeter, where the correspondence with John Wesley began. 

The extracts below are taken from The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, 3rd edition, published in London in 1830. All are addressed to Mr Gidley, Officer of Excise.

London, 18th January 1776

My dear brother,

I am glad to hear that you are ordered to Exeter... We have a small society there, which is but lately formed, and stands in need of every help; so that, I doubt not, your settling among them will be an advantage to them.

Dublin, 4th July 1778

My dear brother,

I am glad to hear that the work of God begins to increase even in poor Exeter... As to the house, it would, undoubtedly, be a means of much good, if it can be procured. All the difficulty is, to procure the money.

London, 25th January 1779

My dear brother

ANY house is ipso facto licensed, if the demand is made either at the Bishop's Court, the Assizes, or the Quarter Sessions. The Act of Parliament licenses, not the Justices. They can neither grant nor refuse. If you have witnesses, your house is licensed: you need trouble the Justices no farther.

Bolton, 11th April 1779

There is no doubt but our brethren at the Conference will readily consent to your asking the assistance  of your neighbours for your preaching-house. And the time appears to be now approaching, when poor Exeter will lift up its head. There is no danger at all of your being a loser, by any bond or security that you have given. If I live to the latter end of summer, I hope to call upon you in my way to Cornwall. 

Bristol, 22nd September 1780

If  I should live till the next autumn, I shall endeavour to see you at Plymouth.

So it seems that Gustavus was transferred to Plymouth, roughly during the years 1780 - 1789. There he was also involved in administering financial support for the Methodist Society's missions for the "Instruction and Conversions of the Negroes in the West-Indies". 

So successful must he have been that by 1793 he had become the Secretary of the Methodist Society in London, which he combined with being the Inspector General of Permits, as listed in Holden's Directories 1805 - 1807. There seem to have been some serious Society matters to settle in the law courts in which he was involved.

Gustavus died in 1810. It is not known where he, nor his wife Joan, were buried. He lived, or possibly his Inspector General's office was based,  in Old Broad Street in London, was the proprietor of properties in Shoreditch, and died in St Luke's parish in North London. He was probably looked after in his final illness by his younger daughter, Margaret Howden, as evidenced by the affidavit she gave when his will was proved in April 1810. Gustavus was not interested in his final resting place "no matter when or where", but made detailed provision for the disposal of his valuables, such as gold sleeve buttons from a late Captain in the Navy, knives and forks brought from the Savannah in 1762, and all his Methodist magazines.

He left three surviving children: sons John and Bartholomew Gidley, and daughter Margaret Ellicombe Howden. Two daughters had pre-deceased him, the older, Ann, having married Thomas Dakin. She had been educated at the Moravian School in Derbyshire in its very earliest days. His elder son, John, followed him into the Excise and as a tax collector, and founded a family in Chipping Ongar in Essex. His younger son, Bartholomew, founded the firm of Sparks and Gidley in South Street in Crewkerne, Somerset, in 1789 to produce linen and woollen girth webbing. It continued to produce webbing until the 1990s under the name Arthur Hart Webbing. 

The photo below of the webbing mill was taken by David Lovell.

An unscrupulous insurance adventurer

It's not often there's sharp practice by a Gidley to report on, but the heading for this post "An unscrupulous insurance adventurer" isn't mine, but contained in a newspaper report from a New York State newspaper.

"An unscrupulous insurance adventurer in London, general manager of "The Empire" was a Mr G W Gidley Lake, a "swell" of the first water, who managed in the short space of two years to be general manager of three successive companies, for life, his salary to increase to $10,000 when the income of the company reached a certain level. "

 According to the newspaper report this condition of his employment apparently led him to bribe other company managers and caused the collapse of "The Empire", which couldn't then pay its unfortunate clerks. The report then goes on with accusations of low chicanery or, at the very least  incompetency, and is incredulous that Gidley Lake has risen again, "wholly incorrigible", with the creation of  the Life Assurance Union, fronted by a J C Bromfield.
Four years later the Insurance Times reported during April and May 1872 that "Mr G Gidley Lake had floated and wound up several insurance companies, and got cheques of "The Empire" drawn for himself for thousands of £s in a false name. He also operated in Ireland where he was not so well known but that company was now wound up and Mr W [sic] Gidley Lake is the only man who knows where its funds are gone to. Mr W Gidley Lake sports a beautiful pair of horses and a handsome carriage and does Rotten Row in fine style. The law of England and Ireland is now that any company started to do life assurance must lodge £20,000 with the government. We hope that this ends Gidley Lake's career in the insurance world." 
So, where did the Gidley Lakes fit into the Gidley family tree? The Gidley Lake tree begins with Joan Gidley who gave birth to an illegitimate child, William Lake Gidley in 1779, who was christened in Gidleigh. I can find no Joan Gidley of the correct age on the Winkleigh tree (which was associated with Gidleigh), but there is a Jane Gidley from nearby Drewsteignton of approximately the right age, who may just possibly be the mother. William Lake Gidley also used the names William Gidley Lake or William Gidley during his lifetime. He was variously described as both a farmer and labourer, late of Throwleigh, when he was declared insolvent and possibly imprisoned for debt in 1836, but he was discharged the same year. By 1841 he had moved to Torquay and was an agricultural labourer in Coombe Pafford. He had a large family of ten children of whom several moved to London, including the next to youngest, George Walter Gidley Lake who was born in 1832. George was a carpenter's apprentice in Torquay in the 1851 census but by 1859  was living in Islington in London and had started on his insurance career. In 1861 he was the Secretary of the Confident Assurance Company. Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper commented on 19 February 1865 on the English Life Assurance Company that one of the directors was G W Gidley Lake, carpenter, and that the "bitterness of the struggle between Mr Gidley Lake and his fellow working men led to some of the parties being banned from their own premises and assaulted in an attempt to enter."
The Penny Illustrated Paper reported on 5 October 1878 that "another of the "enterprising" young joint stock banks is no more. The "Merchants" Joint-Stock Bank, having ... splendidly appointed offices at 92 and 93 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, has come to grief. The manager was a Mr James [sic] Walter Gidley Lake, a name somewhat well-known in connection with former joint-stock companies. Curiously enough, the death of the manager occurred just about the the same time as the demise of the bank, the operations of which seem to have included a good deal of bill-discounting "on the Continong". "

George Walter Gidley Lake died in 1878 at 92-3 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London, so either at his office, or perhaps he lived "over the shop". Hel left three surviving sons and a daughter. Two sons and the daughter emigrated in the 1880s to the United States, possibly to avoid all the bad press, and possibly taking their mother with them, as I haven't traced her death in the UK. There seem to be no descendants. The youngest son Ernest remained as a commercial traveller in "French fancy goods" in North London, but he too  eventually left the country after 1911 and his death has also not yet been traced. It was possibly in South Africa where his daughter travelled in 1927, although she later returned to the UK.