ABSTRACT
Members of the Colyton Mutual and Providential Society, whatever their religious persuasion, had to attend a church service, with a sermon, before they could enjoy a procession led by military bands, a dinner and finally a dance in the Assembly Rooms. In 1851 Colytonians drawn to the Church of England could go to the parish church of St. Andrew, so graphically described by Samuel Seaward in his walk around Colyton, while the Unitarians gathered in George Bull’s meeting-house. Warfare continued sporadically throughout the 1870s, with Proby starting the decade by circulating pamphlets against Protestantism which divided churchgoers from dissenters even further. By the mid-1880s, Rev. Mamerto Gueritz’s battle was largely won. His work with the children of the parish meant that a generation within the Church of England had grown up to whom the Anglo-Catholic ritual was the only known form of worship, and who accepted it without question.
