It must always appear a curious and an unfortunate circumstance that at the time of the great industrial awakening in England in the last half of the eighteenth century, when men, women, and children were losing their individuality and becoming mere industrial units, representing so many pounds of human energy to be added to a machine, the women and children of the factories and of the hovels of the factory towns cried piteously to the Church for bread and received but a stone. And this was at a time when the social needs were so great and the sympathies of all other classes seemed to be alienated by diversity of interest from those who were called upon to toil for the making of England's wealth. Professor Thorold Rogers, the painstaking and acute investigator of England's industry, says with regard to the lethargy which constituted a veritable Dark Age for the English Church: "It is hard indeed to see what there is to relieve the darkness of the picture which the Anglican Church presents from the death of Queen Anne to the time of the Evangelical Revival. Over against the Anglican Church, formal, jealous of laymen, fearful of schism or irregularity, should be set the nonconformist churches." Although there was a great deal of religious enthusiasm in the religious communities of the Commonwealth, the principal branches of the Protestant nonconformists soon became wedded to their own systems, and, in a way, as narrow in their application of the principles of the New Testament as the church from which they had separated. It was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that a movement began which opened the way to lines of development which have been going on ever since. The vast number of present-day religious societies, whether in direct connection with the Church or outside of its pale, may be traced in some ways to the period just before and during the reign of William III. Then arose societies for the reformation of manners in all parts of the kingdom. These societies represented the early stirring of the spirit of reform which found its expression in so many forms of activity in later times. They resembled somewhat the modern societies for the correction of social evils, such as societies for the prevention of vice, or societies for preventing the corrupting of the youth. It was all done under the impulse of religion, but was not initiated by the Church; it was a lay movement. The first distinctively women's movements in religious matters were outside of the Church. The great preacher Whitfield attracted the attention of the Countess of Huntingdon, whose drawing rooms were thrown open for his preaching and were filled by fashionable auditors. Other titled women joined the countess, and among them was the famous Duchess of Marlborough. The interest of noblewomen in a movement essentially plebeian has its parallel in the nineteenth century, when the Salvation Army enlisted the interest and support of women of rank and title.