The meetings at Bow Church, graced by the presence and assisted by the advocacy of such men as Patrick, Burnet, Trelawny, Kidder, Williams, Stanhope, and Bray, were held once a quarter; and, besides sermons delivered on behalf of these societies, there were sermons preached, exposing the vices of the age. In different parts of the country efforts of this kind were made. Stratford, the Bishop, and Fog, the Dean of Chester, warmly took up the new cause, and the picturesque old city in the north became head-quarters for the new crusade. Societies for the reformation of manners gradually multiplied, and within a few years they existed numerously, not only in England, but in Scotland and Ireland; and the undulations of the excitement rolled over Europe, touched Flanders, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and also reached as far as the West Indies and North America. There were not wanting Churchmen who fixed a jealous eye on these proceedings, seeing that they combined Conformists and Nonconformists in works of charity. The goodness of the object did not prevent disapproval of union with schismatics. Archbishop Sharpe, whose suspicions as to the Young Men’s Societies have been already mentioned, refused to countenance in any way those on a broader basis; and Henry Newcome, son of the eminent Presbyterian of that name, when preaching a Reformation Lecture, railed against Dissenters, a circumstance which led Matthew Henry to say, “The Lord be judge between us. Perhaps it will be found that the body of Dissenters have been the strongest bulwarks against profaneness in England.” The practice of laying informations sometimes produced bad blood in Church circles. “My brother Hulton,” Henry records in his _Diary_, “on Lord’s-day was seven-night, observing the churchwardens of St. Peter’s with a strange minister and others, go to Mr. Holland’s alehouse, and sit there three hours, told the Recorder of it. The Bishop came to hear of it, and Mr. Hulton desired his Lordship to admonish them. They set light by the Bishop, and challenged the magistrates to fine them; whereupon Mr. Hulton was summoned to inform against them, and did so, and they were fined, but they were very abusive to him.” The co-operation of Churchmen and Dissenters excited political suspicion; and Vernon, Secretary of State, by no means friendly to such movements, told the Duke of Shrewsbury that the Archbishop apprehended their design was to undermine the Church, and that the Lord Chancellor thought they rather aimed at discrediting the Administration. Even William approved of a watch being kept over the movement, and Somers was for finding out all ways of getting into their secret, and by clandestine means to defeat clandestine objects. Not that Dissenters were suspected of treason, but his Lordship wished to know “what discontented Churchmen or discarded statesmen meant by insinuating themselves into their familiarities.”[448] [Sidenote: RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.]