Transcribed from the 1883 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries for allowing their copy to be consulted for this transcription. CONGREGATIONALISM IN THE COURT SUBURB. * * * * * BY JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D. _Formerly Minister of Kensington Chapel_. * * * * * London: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXXIII. * * * * * Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. * * * * * DEDICATION. THE FOLLOWING HISTORICAL SKETCH, PREPARED AT THEIR REQUEST, Is Gratefully Inscribed TO THE PRESENT MINISTER AND DEACONS OF KENSINGTON CHAPEL. INTRODUCTION. AT the commencement of my History, I wish to convey some idea of what Kensington was at the close of the last century, when the original Nonconformist Church in that place was formed and established. Kensington as a parish must be distinguished from Kensington as a village or suburb. The boundaries of the parish are still unaltered, yet what it contained ninety years ago was different, indeed, from what it contains now. It is startling to read in Lyson’s “Environs,” published in 1795, the following sentence:—“The parish of Kensington contains about 1,910 acres of land, about half of which is pasture meadow, about 360 acres are arable land for corn only, about 230 in market gardens, about 260 cultivated sometimes for corn and sometimes for garden crops, and 100 acres of nursery ground.”