Day 36 - Berwick-Upon-Tweed

We drove over the border back into England today to our next campsite at Spital near Berwick upon Tweed. John Wesley visited this border town at least 19 times according to the poster in "Wetherspoons". Berwick today is England's most northerly town. As a border town between England & Scotland it put Berwick in the frontline of conflict during the 300 years of warfare in the Middle ages. In 1115 King David I of Scotland gave a charter to the monks of Selkirk Abbey and within 10 years it had achieved the status of a royal burgh of Scotland. This year marks Berwick's 900 year history as a seaport and as Scotland's richest town. (The town changed hands 13 times from 1296 - 1482 between Scotland & England). The Tudors reinforced the town medieval walls and in 1558 new ramparts were added. - It is still possible to walk round the walls, and we plan to do that next week. 

Wesley was not over impressed by his visit in his journal for the 26th April 1751 when he recorded that he preached to a large congregation, "though the air was piercingly cold". In 1748 John Wesley preaches in Berwick for the first time to 2,000 people on Palace Green. He also records an earlier visit in 1749 Saturday 9th September. "I rode slowly forward to Berwick. I was myself much out of order; but I would not lose the opportunity of calling, in the evening, all that were “weary and heavy laden,” to Him who hath said, “I will give you rest.” Sunday. 10th September. — "I preached at eight, and at four in the afternoon; and in the hours between, spoke with the members of the society. I met them all at seven, and a glorious meeting it was. I forgot all my pain while we were praising God together; but after they were gone, I yielded to my friends, and determined to give myself a day’s rest. So I spent Monday, the 11th, in writing; only I could not refrain from meeting the society in the evening. The next evening God enabled me to speak searching words to an earnestly attentive congregation".

First things first.. check out the local Costa

View from the campsite looking across to Berwick upon Tweed

In 1549 as Archbishop Cranmer was working to promote the Reformation, and John Knox was appointed as a preacher in Berwick.  Where he preached with his characteristic passion exposing the errors of Catholicism with unsparing severity.The fame of the preacher was only extended by this feeble attempt to restrain his boldness. From a manuscript discovered in the 1870's entitled, "The practice of the Lord's Supper used in Berwick by John Knox, 1550," we know that the very beginning of Puritan practice in the Church of England in the administration of the Lord's Supper is to be found in the practice followed by Knox at Berwick, inasmuch as he substituted common bread for the bread wafers, and gave the first example of substituting sitting instead of kneeling in the receiving of communion.