ABSTRACT
As an eighteenth-century itinerant preacher based in a local Methodist circuit, Thomas Wride was at the centre of a complex personal and professional network. He was accountable to John Wesley and his changing teams of senior aides. He needed to develop productive relationships with his fellow preachers, with circuit and society stewards, with chapel trustees, with any wealthy ‘friends’ in the area, and with others such as Church of England clergy and Dissenting ministers. Wride struggled with all this, and this repeated failure plagued his ministry. His relations with Connexional leaders such as Thomas Coke and Henry Moore tended to be distant and deferential. While Wride worked well with Peter Jaco in Ireland, he was often an awkward colleague to the superintendents (‘assistants’) in his circuits, readily challenging their decisions and criticising their approach to ministry, for example when in York and Grimsby. When he himself served as the assistant, he could be highly critical of junior colleagues and throughout his itinerant career and even in retirement, continued to offer frank, negative, and sometimes brutal feedback to other preachers on their theology, preaching, and neglect of discipline. While his judgements were sometimes sound, his manner repeatedly caused problems.
