‘“Hat’s Off”: Methodism and Popular Protest in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the Chartist era: a case study of Benjamin Rushton (1785-1853) of Halifax’

This article explores Methodist influences derived from Wesleyanism, the Methodist New
Connexion, the Primitive Methodists, the Primitive Methodist Revivalists and the
Independent Methodists on the radical politics of Benjamin Rushton, a handloom weaver
and Methodist preacher. It argues that his anti-clerical preference that no paid minister
officiate at his funeral should not be interpreted as evidence of apostasy and challenges
meta-narratives of secularisation which may have obscured the religious underpinning of
Chartism, which may have owed more than has been hitherto allowed to the culture as well
as the organisation of Methodism