A voluntary Christian society, situated like this at Ashley, in the course of such a long period, having now existed for 175 years, must have undergone many changes. The erection of new places of worship in localities where its hearers and members in the early period of its history used to reside, has at length confined its connexions to four or five villages in its immediate vicinity, and they are of small population, and several of the old Dissenting families have been removed from them. Being simply an agricultural district, without trade or manufactures, there is no prospect of much increase. As young persons rise into life they remove to other places for employment, and some of the most active and useful have been thus lost to the place that gave them birth: but still a small Church remains to bear its testimony to the great principles of the Gospel, and to the truth and faithfulness of God; and it may yet extend and prosper, by united believing prayer and earnest effort, under the blessing of the great God of Zion. CHAPTER VI. MEMORIALS OF THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH AT WELFORD. In the extra-parochial district of Sulby, about a mile from the village of Welford, was founded in the twelfth century a monastery for a certain order of monks. It was handsomely endowed, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The site is now occupied by farm buildings. But as another illustration of the changes which occur in this mutable world, there resided, 180 years ago, in some part of that abbey, a man who would not conform to the dictates of his fellow men in the things of God--"a man of worth, a man of letters too;" one eminent for learning, talent, piety, usefulness; who laid the foundation of two Dissenting interests in the county of Northampton, and kept a Dissenting academy at Sulby, or a seminary for the education of young men, several of whom became eminent Dissenting ministers. This person was the Rev. John Shuttlewood, A.B. He was born at Wymeswold, in the county of Leicester, January 3rd, 1632, of respectable parents, who sent him to the Grammar-school at Leicester, and afterwards to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he obtained the degree of A.B. He was ordained to the ministry in 1654, not by episcopal ordination it would appear, but in the method more generally adopted in the days of the Commonwealth, in the congregation of Raunston, with an honourable testimonial from the classical presbytery of Wirksworth, in the province of Derby. The deep humility, piety, and devotedness of his spirit were manifest by a solemn dedication of himself to God, drawn up about this time in Latin, of which the following is a translation:--